Friday, 26 Jan 2001

ESCALANTE, Utah

“What would you say that the main theme
of your poetry is?”
“To put it as simply as possible.
I say it this way: to recognize
the relationships I share with everything.”

I would like to know well the path
from just east of Black Mountain
to the gray outcropping of Roof Butte
without having to worry
about the shortest way possible.
— Simon J. Ortiz, “Woven Stone”

Simon Ortiz is part of my morning ritual. His words help me to hold for a moment the knowledge of where we all came from and how we’re all connected. Mr. Ortiz has recorded time in his bones, absorbed confusion and pain, and passed on to us the air of the ancients. As I start off on the road this morning, in the black and cold, I wish that breath could touch everyone.

Today’s journal entry is, thankfully, short. I am on the road for six hours to Salt Lake City from Escalante for a gathering tonight of the SLC Broads, the Slick Chicks.

The Great Old Broads for Wilderness is a female organization. Some of the attributes of femaleness have been laughed at, decried, and denied for as long as I can remember, and I am very old! Gossip, for instance. Women talk. And the best of men, who have a good touch of femaleness, also talk. Talking is a good thing. We encourage it.

Groups of Broads just sort of naturally come together to talk, which is how the organization has grown — by word of mouth — to almost 3,000 recognized members. (There are doubtless hundreds of thousands of Broads whom we have not heard from yet, but we will.) Groups of Broads across the country are coming together naturally. Each group is different; there are no rules. There are no dues.

The get-together tonight is with a group that started after a bunch of us went to Jarbidge, Nev., to brace up the Shovel Brigade last July. (Rumor had it 10,000 angry men with shovels were going to rip up an old roadbed — just because it was the manly thing to do — and destroy the habitat of the endangered bull trout. It turned out there were 300 of them and they dug a 90-foot road. Yawn.) Many in that group of Broads were from Salt Lake City. And here we are gathering together, as we have since last fall.

We have met for beers and for dinner. While Broads love beer and dinner, a “cell” of Broads cannot exist for long without creating action energy. The Broads called for purpose, so tonight’s gathering is to talk about Utah Broads doing some archival research to determine what the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument lands looked like B.C. — before cows.

One of the difficulties in bringing lawsuits alleging grazing damage is that there is no “before” picture to show the court. People who come here for the first time believe that this is how the land has always looked. Cows have been on the land here for over 100 years, before there were convenient cameras for taking the casual snapshot of your ol’ backyard desert. We are hoping that written materials, photographs, and drawings exist that will refer to the springs in the desert, or the grasses, or the wildlife that existed there — B.C.

We have some Broads who know their way around the various library resources at the universities and other places to guide us. If nothing else, it will educate us about the people who settled southern Utah and, because many of their great-grandchildren are still residents here, something about the folks who now own the cows.

Also on the nonyagenda is plotting and scheming in preparation for our appearance at the Jeep Safari in April in Moab.

And, after enough of the homemade wine, we’ll discuss Camping in Cow Poop in May. (Broads are game as hell, but they are not stupid!)

The sun’s coming up behind me, reflecting off the obscenely pink cliffs of Bryce Canyon. There is no way to convey the breathtaking scene. I have to stop and step out to welcome the sun — and because I’ve had lots of coffee. It’s cold and crisp. Pink and gold. The sky in the west shimmers pink, blue, and yellow changes, like a Barbie doll aurora borealis. Please believe me, this is true. A bald eagle just flew off its breakfast up into a ponderosa, away from me so I can see the spread of the white tail feathers as he lands. I am the luckiest, the richest, and most grateful SOB. What a life.

Namaste.

That dream
shall have a name
after all,
and it will not be vengeful
but wealthy with love
and compassion
and knowledge.
And it will rise
in this heart
which is our America.
— Simon Ortiz, from “Sand Creek”