Waves of Sand
in Rainbow Country

I

am headed out to the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, which straddles the Arizona-Utah border. I have yearned to return here, this enchanting, surreal, isolated country painted in rainbow colors. This time, to live out my dream to walk the rocks and know, see, dream the epochs that unfolded here. 

A Gas Station in Kanab, Utah

I pull over into a gas station in Kanab, Utah to get a coffee. In front of me at the checkout line is an old woman dressed in a plain, hand-stitched dress and a white bonnet. She stands next to a man maybe fifteen years older than her.

The gas station cashier is also elderly. He has ruddy, sheep-dog cheeks and heavy eyelid bags, revealing curious eyes. He asks the elderly customer what is in store for today. 

“Just a drive down to Zion,” the man explains. “Oh, fantastic,” the sheepdog attendant replies. After some small-talk, he looks sternly at the woman. “Now you remember here,” he says, wagging his finger. “One of the commandments of Zion states, ‘Thou shalt not climb a rock higher than five feet tall!” He says, bellowing in laughter. “You know they have a lot of tall rocks in Zion!”

I watch the woman for her expression, and it’s a faint half smile, the smile of someone who knows they are being teased.

When it’s my turn to buy coffee, the attendant asks the same of me. “I’ve been trying to see a condor for the last twenty years,” I explain. “Today is going to be my lucky day!”

“They’re ugly, I hear,” he retorts, ringing me up. I ask, “How about you, how’s your morning?”

"O

h,” he says, “Maybe not so good. I went up to Cedar City for a bowling tournament. We lost, and it wasn’t pretty. They ended up with an eighty point advantage on us. I have to tell you, their pins were rigged and their alleys were so narrow.”

I walk out to the Jeep, and I see the old man and his wife again, wondering what it must be like to be that woman, one of many wives. How often did her husband and her do something special together like today’s trip to Zion National Park? How many wives does he cycle through before he gets back to her?

While it was only recently that the Mormon church has admitted that both of its founders, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, were polygamists (Joseph Smith had forty wives), Kanab itself is a conservative Mormon town without a large polygamist population - the fundamentalist Mormons live to the south of here, in a handful of towns straddling the Utah-Arizona border.

Despite that fact, evidence of fundamentalist and polygamist Mormons abound in Kanab, as many come here for work, often seen quietly cleaning hotel rooms or working in back kitchens. They stick out in their pastel-colored dresses, color-coded to identify which husband they belong to.

Kanab has existed since 1864, but it is most famous for the 2006 decision by then Mayor Kim Lawson, in coordination with Kanab City Council, to pass Resolution 1-1-06R, otherwise known as "The Natural Family: A Vision for the City of Kanab."

Normally, a sort of religiously-influenced mission statement for a quiet Mormon town might not get noticed at all. But 2006 was a year that the U.S. was embroiled in a fever pitch of social conservative zeal, drunk on the anti-gay doctrine of the 2004 Republican convention, hypnotized by countless Fox News talking heads, who, on a daily basis, almost singularly hammered on social conservative family issues, diverting their audience from budget-breaking war in the Middle East, climate inaction, and a looming financial crisis.

So, it's no wonder then, that this small, hyper-conservative little Mormon town in Utah got all swept up in that zeal, and dictated:

Today there are large waves coming towards us in all directions, the most serious is the denigration of the natural family as the fundamental unit of society. It has been determined that the natural family results in healthier, happier, more productive, and more civically-engaged adults as well as healthier, happier, safer, and better educated children. We envision a local culture that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as ordained of God. This culture affirms marriage as the best path to health, security, fulfillment, and joy. It casts the home built on marriage as the source of true political sovereignty and ordered liberty. 

The resolution suggested that Kanab, whose economy is almost entirely driven by tourism, didn’t welcome everybody. This was problematic, because the sort of person who would visit Kanab tended to be young, single adventurers from international destinations, or ethnically diverse Western cities. Clearly, they, and so many others in American society, were being given a very clear sign.

B

ut an unlikely voice, a young local Mormon boy who was an intern at the Southern Utah News, became the mayor’s antagonizer. Matt began to openly question the resolution in his weekly column, Cowboy Currents. As the mayor became increasingly incensed, threatening Matt, the story went national, with stories appearing in the Salt Lake Tribune, Los Angeles Times, NPR and across the major networks. Then, acclaimed travel reviewer Arthur Frommer, read by travelers around the world, urged his readers not to visit Kanab, citing its intolerance. 

Back in 2006, I was following the story of Matt Livingston Omega closely, as I was still enthralled by the spate of national monument expansions in the area that would form the heart of my travel writing interests over the next twenty years, and I tried to stay connected to this region from afar.

Remembering Matt’s story, I decided to try to get in touch with him seventeen-years later. On my way to look for condors, I pull over on the side of the road and send him a message.

Interview with Matt Livingston Omega

Erik: What was it like growing up in Kanab? Did kids realize how amazing the landscape they lived in was?

Matt: Talk about living in the bubble. Kanab is the bubble. Everyone knows everything about everyone. Beyond that, everything for those of us who were Mormon was judged through that lens, too. For me, I was too wrapped up trying to be the best at everything, winning a state championship and getting scholarships, to really enjoy the ‘greatest earth on show’ all around me. 

Sure, we ran around on the red hills and caught snakes and lizards, but I didn’t take the time like I would now to soak in the beauty and adventure of Southern Utah. A lot of my reservations were also tied to the pressures of living in the bubble. The kids who would be out in the wild often did so in ways that I considered unacceptable: hunting, drinking, having sex, that sort of thing. So, I got as many jobs as I could and filled my schedule to stay out of trouble. As soon as I reached the point in my adult life that I had a lot of control over my schedule, I frequently traveled halfway across the country to hike Zion or the Grand Canyon or take my kids to the Sand Dunes, or Peekaboo Canyon in Kanab. I do love it there.

Erik: The assumption a lot of times is that when you have a rural, religious conservative town, that everybody is going to pretty much tow the line. So, what was it that made you understand that this resolution was wrong? Was it your faith, or your upbringing, or something else?

Matt: The assumption of conformity is correct, and absolutely comes full of the hypocrisy it implies. You go to a Mormon church in Kanab and you see a one-size-fits-all approach: work hard, have a lot of kids, tell a lot of jokes, drink a lot of Coke…the Coke, because it is allowed, while coffee and alcohol are not…and you’ll be happy. In 1995 or so, the Church passed a resolution very similar to the Natural Family resolution that Kanab city passed in 2006. It’s one thing for a religion to promote family ideology, and a much different thing for an American city government to do so. The Mormon church absolutely had a lot of ideology and influence over the city government at the time when I was in high school, and a lot of the guys held leadership positions in both. They probably read the resolution and were thinking, ‘great! We already push this on church members, now we can push it on everyone else!’ 

In reality, Kanab is an incredibly diverse little city. People of all walks of life end up there. It’s not just the Mormon settlers who roll up in wagons like they did 150 years ago. The resolution struck me as fundamentally unfair at its offset because of the way it was passed: the dudes in charge did it without the single female on the council in attendance and called it unanimous. What a joke. And then the content itself is brimming with cute little metaphors and ideals that are absolutely brutal to so many members of the community: single-parent homes, families without children, fundamentalist LDS members, and so on. Then there was the third issue, Kanab is a tourist destination. Kanab’s businesses rely on tourist revenue, regardless of the family structure of said tourists. Why deter anyone from visiting Kanab based on their personal family structure? And hurt Kanab’s businesses in the process? It was a zero sum game. The only winners were the alpha males on the city council stroking their egos for having wives and, presumably, quivers of children.

Erik: You were only 17 during this controversy. Were you ever scared, or wondering whether you did the right thing? Or did you revel in it?

Matt: I had been writing for the city paper for about six months when the city council passed this resolution. I wrote a weekly article called ‘Cowboy Currents.’ 

The family values controversy was some of the best content I got all year! I loved it. When I helped give a voice to those who the city council apparently wanted to silence, it was empowering. I received letters and phone calls of love and support for months. I was featured in a little documentary. It was a little bit overwhelming. 

I felt like Benjamin Franklin as Silence Dogood, only everyone knew who I was. My editor Dixie Brunner really helped keep me grounded and leverage the writing as a way to get good exposure for writing. That was the most important part for me at the time. Universities called and asked to use my article in their curriculum. Then there was the effect it had in the ‘bubble’ of Kanab. Most of my peers were unaware anything was happening. The mayor himself retaliated in what I viewed as a cowardly way, and refused to confront me in person. The newspaper office was only about 100 yards from city hall. I walked over a few times and requested an in-person meeting with no luck. A radio station came to town and hosted a little debate with myself, the mayor, and a few others where I felt like we exposed a lot of the chauvinist patriarchal agenda of the mayor and his men.

I did feel a bit of a moral dilemma at times, like, if my Church believes in these values then should I really be fighting a city council for doing the same? But the auspices of a church versus a government were so distinct and clear to me that I felt confident it was important to give a voice to all those who would be hurt by the resolution.

Erik: Tell me a bit about your family in Arizona. Did you leave your hometown for work?

Matt: I didn't find my Arizona family until Fall of 2020. I graduated high school the year of the Family Values debacle and went to Brigham Young University like many Mormon males. I went on a two-year mission for the Church and got married soon after, also like many Mormon males. I ended up divorced with two kids in Atlanta back in 2017. In the Fall of 2019 I had a dream that my twin-flame soul mate was in Arizona, and as soon as COVID hit, it opened the door for me to move there. I found her within a few months. It was amazing. She was divorced with one son, plus my two, and since then we have added two more boys for a total of 5 boys and three co-parent families. It is a complicated dynamic and we love it. You can read more about the challenges and triumphs we face together in my next book due out in 2024, Alpha to Omega.

Erik: The Natural Family Resolution appeared to target primarily gays and lesbians. But I wonder if it was also targeting the fundamentalist Mormon families from Colorado City and Hildale?

Matt: At the time of the resolution, one of my coworkers at one of my jobs had been recently kicked out of Colorado City. Nothing seemed fair about kicking him while he was down and that’s exactly what I saw in the resolution. He was either damned for staying in Colorado City and being pushed toward plural marriage, or damned for leaving and becoming a single parent here. It seemed to me like there were more people like him, regardless of their situation, than there were people who found any sort of solace or validation in its ideals.

Erik: What was it like when Mayor Kim Lawson started to go after you? What do you think he was trying to accomplish?

Matt: This was the best part! I faced him head on. I think he was, as my editor Dixie said, ‘just trying to be a bully.’ His reaction proved that he was a bully trying to push me around, just like he passed a resolution to push ‘non-traditional’ families around. He wrote a letter to my superintendent at school asking to expel me, and a letter to my church leader asking him to discipline me. I found it invigorating and it reminded me of many of the reasons why I liked writing. Freedom of speech! Freedom to seek justice! Freedom!

Erik: Did he ever apologize, or did you ever talk to him again?

Matt: The only in-person confrontation we ever had was that radio debate in the high school auditorium. If we were to be scored by judges in that debate I think it would have been a rout. We had no other in-person conversation. I mentioned that I stopped by city hall and requested a meeting at least twice. I tried reaching him by phone. I even wrote him a personal letter, which went unanswered. He seemed only interested in posturing and publicity.

Erik: Can you tell me more about the letters the mayor sent involving your editor and publisher, Dixie Brunner?

Matt: I mentioned the letters he sent to my ecclesiastical and educational leaders. I believe he also sent one to Dixie, but she would have just thrown it away. She was used to his bullying and had already been decorated by the Utah Press Association for having ‘Courage Under Fire’ publishing other material the mayor disliked.

Erik: I imagine there are as many gay, lesbian and intersex kids in Kanab as anywhere else. Do you remember knowing any of them? What do you think life is like for a gay kid in Kanab in 2023?

Matt: This question makes me cry. There were only a few openly queer kids in my high school. No doubt more would have come out if it was safe. The one kid I can think of had a really hard time. I was as rude to him as anyone. I reluctantly participated with some buddies in shop class making a wooden paddle so we could smack him with it. I knew it was wrong and hated myself for it but didn’t speak up in his defense. I went along with it and our Principal, who was a friend’s Dad, helped me see the wrong in what I was doing. There were times after that we shared a laugh or group project without me shaming him. 

Erik: How would the LDS faith guide you in treating them?

Matt: Frankly this was a big part of the problem. The LDS church is usually a little late on coming around to socio economic norms. At that time, for example, a gay couple were not allowed to hold hands at church or openly show any affection at all. They were not allowed to participate in simple things like having an adopted kid baptized. We were taught it was of the devil and hellish behavior. It was really messed up, and put us in a really judgmental situation. I feel really sick and sad thinking back to how that shaped my worldview. There was a popular Utah blog at the time about a gay man who was married with kids because he felt like God would forgive him for doing the “right thing” even though what was truly in his heart was “wrong.” The LDS church has come a long way since then, but I am less familiar with the official policies now.

Erik: The resolution argues that natural families result in “healthier, happier, more productive, and more civically-engaged adults” and “healthier, happier, safer, and better educated children.” What do you think makes families more healthy, happy and educated?

Matt: Love. Only love. Love as you are, where you are, all the time. It comes from the vulnerability of seeing yourself and allowing others to see you. It’s scary because you need to hold a lot of space for yourself as both the hero and the villain. Nothing is separate in love. And you risk being rejected and judged by others. I still struggle a lot with love, but am learning. As a perfectionist people-pleaser I could teach seminars about how harmful it is to judge yourself. 

Erik: Did the Natural Families resolution affect Kanab negatively in any way, especially after Arthur Frommer’s comments? Is it old news or is there still a residual effect?

Matt: The resolution could not have been worse for Kanab. They passed it in the Spring, just before what would have been a record tourist season. Entire tour groups canceled. Busloads and busloads of people from all over the world circumnavigated Kanab. Although I believe they redacted the resolution, it was too little, too late at the time. Hotels were empty, people lost jobs, the town really suffered. The effects went into the next summer in 2007. Then the recession hit. The family resolution basically gave Kanab a 2-year head start on the housing crash. It was a rough time for a lot of people. 

Condors in Marble Canyon

I

am chewing on Kim Lawson’s resolution for a different reason: why did he and the city council use the word, ‘natural’, when referring to healthy families? Doesn’t natural imply the use of nature and science, rather than gods and religion? The resolution clearly stated that its assumption about large families was based on some sort of precedent of fact. But whose facts?

I drive the 54 miles through the mixed ponderosa, fir, spruce, aspen, oak, pine, and juniper highlands North Grand Canyon forests, to the Condor Release Site, dipping into Arizona and below the large bright red step of the Vermilion cliffs, where the condors are sometimes seen, high up on the cliff tops.

A small rock road leads out to the original release site, where in 1996, California Condors were released into the wild here, five years after they had begun to be reintroduced to the wild in select spots in California.

These condors had gone extinct in the wild in 1987, their populations imperiled by DDT insecticide and lead bullets. After a harrowing journey of resuscitating the world’s remaining population of only 27 remaining zoo-bound California Condors, the species now has a stable population of about 200 individuals. Plans to release them into the Columbia River Gorge, near Portland and The Dalles, are underway.

Here, I scan the cliffs with my binoculars, but like all the years prior, I am out of luck. I decide to continue east to Marble Canyon, spanned by the impressive Navajo Bridge with grand views in both directions of the Colorado River, and the first hints of the Grand Canyon downstream.

From the pedestrian bridge, I work my eyes along the trusses of the automobile bridge, then find a vantage point on the other side of the canyon where I can study the pedestrian bridge trusses. Yet again, no condors.

Satisfied by my views of the red and yellow Colorado cliffs, I prepare to return to the Jeep, but decide at the last minute to let my binoculars zigzag along the cliff sides. As I’m about to give up, I see two black spots on a red cliff-ledge, about a football-field length away. Two California Condors! They are a pair, and they are nuzzling and preening each other. It is a moment of genuine affection, and rather than seeing these giant birds as ugly, find the male’s red and yellow head, and jet black feathers, quite beautiful. 

I watch for several minutes, and then attract the attention of several bridge tourists, showing them the huge birds and teaching the children how to focus the binoculars.

But just then, the male jumps off the ledge in one great leap. His sheer size is overwhelming—like a plane rather than a bird—and he soars directly overhead us in grand, sweeping circles.

“Yes, condors are actually vultures,” I explain as the children start to rattle out questions. “This is the largest bird in North America, and his cousin in South America is the largest flying bird in the world!”

W

hen the adults ask about the other condor, I explain that this is a pair, and that condors are monogamous, they are husband and wife for life, at least most of the time! Andean Condors are truly monogamous. But,” I whisper this part. “This is the weird thing. We’ve just discovered that female California Condors can actually produce viable eggs without the help of males.”

“What?”, the woman from Cheyenne, Wyoming says, incredulous. “Like Mother Mary,” I whisper. She goes over to her husband to tell him that, and when they both return, I tell them that female asexual reproduction is actually a great survival strategy for an animal on the brink of extinction.”

I say goodbye to the families, and begin my drive north to Page, Arizona, high on the sighting of a soaring condor. What I didn’t tell the couple from Cheyenne is what I had been thinking about ever since I rekindled my interest in Kanab’s Natural Family resolution. Mayor Kim Lawson, and the entire City Counsil board in 2006, are Mormon conservatives, and maybe don’t actually have sufficient expertise or credentials to tell anybody else what is and isn’t a natural family. Aren’t nature and science better equipped to explain human behavior, and human family dynamics? Don’t we have a whole lot of human history—and animal history—to explain what a natural family should look like?

In fact, when I hear the phrase, “natural family”, it makes me think immediately about the role of the family in nature. Or rather, the role of families, and single people, within a community or a civilization.

Several years ago, Jane and I were picking up our son from camp in Bemidji, Minnesota. We were staying in a large hotel on the beach of Lake Bemidji, and we were staring out the window at the shallow water below.

Along came something so strange, I first had trouble understanding what we were seeing. It was a female Common Merganser duck followed closely and in single-file by a group of about forty or fifty ducklings.  She wagged her head back and forth, and the ducklings feebly imitated her, all the while paddling quickly along the edge of the shore.

There was no way those were all her ducklings! But, what then, was going on? I would later learn that this merganser was not even related to those ducklings. Rather, she was chosen by the dopping as a sort of duck teacher - a non-breeding female suited to teach critical feeding skills.

This crèche behavior is an amazing evolutionary strategy, one that we see elsewhere. Humans, like condors and mergansers, also have evolved behaviors, tastes, gender identities and sexualities, all of which form a much more meaningful sense of the concept of the Natural Family.

Humans are a monogamous species - no, that doesn’t mean we have to be monogamous, or that we shouldn’t divorce or remarry. It means that our species tends towards monogamy because it suits the terribly long time it takes to bring our children into adulthood. Monogamy is an innate strategy in our species; the desire to love one person forever is evolved behavior that leads us toward that desire.

Polygamy works for many species. With many mice species, polygamy is a successful breeding strategy that passes the best sperm on to the most females. But it does not work for humans, which is why we separate it out from, and why it is illegal in most cultures.

In nearby twin towns of Colorado City and Hildale, for example, the failure of polygamy as a successful human breeding strategy is on full display. These two towns share the dubious distinction of having the highest counts of fumarase deficiency - severe developmental disability caused by the incessant breeding between cousins.

While polygamy creates health problems among Mormon polygamists, it also wrecks lives. In Colorado City and Hildale, older males have incentives to come up with ways to push younger males out of the community, in order to grow their harems, keep the flow of young women piling up into their households. In a polygamous society, most men can never have a family, and it’s well documented that these men often get thrown out to become homeless, penniless, addicted to meth in roadside border cities.

Women are the most negatively affected by polygamy, of course. To be relegated to living in a dorm room, a virtual slave and part-time wife. The polygamist practitioners are often among the poorest in the country, but as their harem sizes increase, so do their homes. That’s one of the reasons why the huge homes of Colorado City look like they’re about to fall apart. To make up for their fifteen bedroom homes, these men must build the shoddiest of dwellings. Often, there are no windows on bare window frames, there are no plants in the garden, and the door is just a piece of plywood.

So when Kim Lawson says that a big family is better, I’m not so sure that's true. In fact, this idea among social religious conservatives that big, traditional families are this overarching mechanism of societal success doesn’t really make statistical sense, at least not in the way that they use it to disparage the rest of society. Only thirty-seven percent of Americans live in couple households. Single people, widowed people, divorced people, gay people, asexual people, intersex people, parents living in their kid’s homes, friends cohabitating, single mothers, single fathers and orphaned children overwhelm the two-parent family, and if all of these people living outside of the traditional family saw themselves as a single group, they would be a force to be reckoned with.

Evidence suggests that the healthiest and happiest families are ones that live within the context of a healthy community, one where singles and families of all types are more diverse. Communities that embrace their singles, their divorced and their diverse generations are more productive, are more innovative, have lower incidences of poverty, domestic abuse, and are generally considered better places to live, work and play.

Remember that non-breeding female merganser? 

Scientists now believe that in deep human history, gays and other genders assumed child-rearing roles, much like the old single female merganser in Bemidji.

More Americans are identifying as gay or some other third gender. But that doesn’t mean that there is a fad or a trend. Sexuality is a relatively fixed thing. You are born or you develop into your sexuality at an early age. Maybe six percent of all humans are born gay, but another 1.7% are born asexual, and another 1.7% are born with intersex traits, and another 0.5% are transgender. 

Those numbers above probably underestimate the total percentage of non-standard sexualities, but it’s important to note that these numbers are not new. If 9% of all humans are LGBTQ today, then it is almost certain that the genetic makeup of humans 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago and 100,000 years ago was almost identical.

How is it possible that sexual diversity remains so omnipresent among humans? Wouldn’t evolution drive us towards sexualities that meet egg to sperm? One theory holds that gays and lesbians make up for bearing fewer children by supporting the reproductive fitness of their relatives and community. 

Sexual diversity is everywhere in nature. Darwin spent years studying the hermaphroditic behavior of barnacles. Some fish are male, and then female, and then male again. It is almost certain that the ubiquity of multiple genders among animals lies in the multiple advantages sexual diversity offers a species, as well as living population.

And don’t forget the California Condors, once limited to 27 individuals. How many times in the history of life on Earth did life persist, or thrive, because its genetic code was more complex than just binary?

I once saw Red-crowned Manakins in the forest canopy in Costa Rica. These are very small birds, not much larger than hummingbirds. The males have black bodies and a sharp red head with bright white eyes. Their legs are covered in bright yellow fuzzy feathers, making them look almost like disco dancers.

I was watching them at one of their leks, a long branch between two trees. Two males converged on the branch, staring each other down.

Soon, a female appeared, eyeing the two males below her. Suddenly, one male started to walk backwards, in a fashion so surreal and unbelievable, it appeared he was floating backwards, almost like Michael Jackson on a moonwalk. Then, he began bobbing his head, also dance-like, and then continuing elaborate backward walks.

The female watched curiously, until the second male began a similar dance, and she turned her gaze on him. This male gave quite a display, his moonwalks equally inspiring from the vantage point of my earthbound binocular view.

But what did the female do? She flew off, rejecting both of them! 

Why? Were neither of those dances good enough for her?

The answer to that question is that sexuality is mysterious, unknowable. The details that that individual female is attracted to cannot ever be known to us, the same way that we can never explain what characteristics Mayor Kim Lawson is attracted to: maybe, women in leopard-skin pillbox hats? 

A few weeks ago, I watched as a few of my divorced male friends engaged with their dating app. With Bumble, you swipe left if you reject a woman based on her looks, and swipe right if you are attracted to them - if you might want to meet. 

Here I am watching these adult males, and they are swiping left when they should be swiping right, and swiping right when they should be swiping left. They are literally getting every answer wrong! Why was the bright-eyed girl with the rosy cheeks passed over for the hard-faced businesswoman with the stern glare?

I was confused. Do these self-professed Bumble experts not remember how to Bumble? But, later, I realize that they were swiping according to their own tastes - preferences that were dictated to them, almost certainly, at birth. 

That is a reminder that, even among heterosexual men and women, sexual diversity is stunning. 

This diversity - that unknowable attraction to the hard-nosed businesswoman - is what keeps the human gene pool constantly invigorated. It is not up to me to care about which way they Bumble. The more different types of people mate, and the more mysterious and diverse is our cumulative sexuality, the more humanity evolves, becomes resistant to new diseases, and allows the greater population the ability to give the fate of Colorado City and Hildale a wide berth. 

Anywhere where you have that blend of social conservatism and polygamy, leading to predictable and safe mating, you develop the signature problems of such a society.

That is also why the new eugenics movements we are seeing popping up in the Eastern United States and in Great Britian, where groups of young mothers and fathers select their mates in the hopes of superbreeding—developing superior children, will just never amount to much. Nature, and the great mystery of sexuality, does a much better of that.

House Rock Valley Road

T

he next day, I head out on Highway 89 towards the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument to meet up with Steve, who has guided trips into the Vermilion Cliffs area since 1993, and Erwin and Sonia from Belgium.

Steve is a Texan Jeff Bridges with a Cormac McCarthy sensibility for describing life, politics and nature in this isolated country. He is troubled by the recent dual deaths, and the missing person in Buckskin Gulch after a flash flood filled the slot canyon with a wall of water.

This year’s unusual long and cold winter has affected everything here. Not far north of here, roads are surrounded by five feet of snow. Many of the roads remain impassable. We will be among the first to drive House Rock Valley Road after mud, roaring river crossings and snow kept most vehicles from entering the seasonally dangerous road. 

Erwin and Sonia have a beautifully simple travel philosophy. They are in love with bright, sunny color palettes, and rather than spreading their travels to ever new places, they revisit the same three regions they are most passionate about - the Canary Islands, Namibia, and the American Southwest, over and over again over the decades, exploring each more fully. 

Our three-hour drive into the Vermilion Cliffs area will wind through red stone canyon, sandy flats and broad Ponderosa pine woodlands. The Vermilion Cliffs area is so remote, and so relatively difficult to access, that Steve believes much of it is still awaiting exploration: that fantastic geology and landscapes abound that are simply yet to be discovered.

Many natural areas in southern Utah have become overrun with people, making them feel more like zoos than wild lands. In Arches National Park, and parts of Zion National Park, the crowds are so persistent that traffic jams are common, the defiling of the natural geologic formations is getting worse each year.

But in the three National Monuments that straddle the Utah-Arizona border - Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Bears Ears National Monument and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, the relative inaccessibility keeps the crowds at bay. You have to really want to get somewhere in these regions, and that keeps these wildernesses appropriately empty. 

When I visited nearby Coyote Buttes North several years ago, it was still relatively unknown, and a strict permitting system limited access to 20 visitors per day. I had been the only visitor that day, because I had also been traveling there in the winter, when the road was almost impassable.

“Now the Bureau of Land Management allows sixty people,” Steve explains of the small geologic formation which has become a must-see destination for Instagrammers. “There are scratch marks all over the place now, because people are walking there with their trekking poles, digging into the rock. Sixty visitors a day is a bad idea.”

As Steve drives us across a broad badland with sweeping views of red cliffs, we startle a mob of mule deer—maybe 25 in number—which bound across the road in unison.

Jurassic Sand Sea of White Pocket

W

e arrive at the geologic formation known as White Pocket, and the four of us file out onto the trail to get there. White Pocket is one of the most unique, and exquisite stone landscapes on Earth. It is miles of white sandstone, laced with reds, oranges, yellows and lavenders. In wet winters like this one, pools of water abound in the psychedelic landscape, evoking a lost world.

A lost world, sure, but what did this place look like in the time these rocks were created?

A few weeks ago, Jane and I went to a small alphabet district wine bar in Portland for oysters. As we were walking towards the bar, Jane mentioned a building that ‘must have been a hundred years old.’ I was about to doubt her, as hundred-year old buildings are rare in the American west. But as we approached the building, a plaque read, “Built in 1914.”

I told her that I had trouble imagining this neighborhood then. But in fact, if I wanted to imagine it, I could, because there is a litany of historic photographs, newspaper clippings, historic documents and historiographic journals, memorabilia and personal narratives about any neighborhood in a medium-sized city. If I wanted to ‘see’ my walk to the oyster bar in a different era, the tools to do so existed.

But seeing the ancient epochs that were responsible for the vivid geology of the Vermilion Cliffs regions was something entirely different.

Much of the joy of travel is in our revisiting of history. But how often does that go like this: here is a castle, and this is how that castle relates to this war, and then soon after, that nation-state crumbled, and Mr. So and So, the famous commander, died there.

What if I could, rather, take what I had learned and then project it out onto my view, extrapolating knowledge into an imagined historical landscape?

I let Steve, Erwin and Sonia walk ahead through the labyrinth of white. I try to imagine White Pocket a long time ago, but visually, I can’t let go of what is actually in front of me.

But then, I let my eyes lose focus, so that everything is blurry, and this hard beautiful sandstone dissolves. I reconstruct it. It is 200 million years ago, and I imagine myself walking along the crest of a forty-five foot tall Jurassic sand dune.

This is not a simple field of sand dunes, but a sand sea, a vast erg as massive as today’s empty quarter of Arabia. There is no visible life, no plants. Just an endless tan landscape. 

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n the distance, a shallow sea laps against the dunes, and a vicious, persistent wind, the same wind responsible for the creation of these dunes, blows relentlessly from the Pacific to the west.

This erg represents the southwestern edge of the great supercontinent, Pangaea; the Utah-Arizona region resides in a very different part of the globe. Pangaea is being pulled apart, so great inland seas are forming around the dunelands.

As Pangaea begins to separate, these dunes are covered periodically by water, cementing them into sandstone. They rise up from the sea, and are covered by the sea, again and again. With each rise and fall of the sea levels comes new exposure to irons, rusting the sandstone red, and blues, from manganese that settled into the layers of silt. 

As I walk along this tan landscape, I see movement below me, a herd of herbivores, moving quickly between the dunes. Their skin is the color of sand, and you might have even missed that they were there. But they are not lost, nor running away from anything. These dinosaurs are en route to an oasis. While sometimes we think of dinosaurs as thriving in wet, swampy lands, much of dinosaur evolution occurred in bone dry landscapes.

And, Mayor Kim Lawson may not like to hear this, but among that herd is at least one gay dinosaur.

Late Cretaceous Swamp Forest on Cottonwood Canyon Road

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fter a long, extraordinary day with Steve and the Belgians, I ask for advice on my next day’s walk. Considering the state of the muddy roads around here, Steve suggests an area along the graded Cottonwood Canyon Road. 

The next day, I head out on the road and locate a narrow trail leading up to a ledge that offers sweeping views of the Vermilion Cliffs region, and the Grand Canyon region beyond that.

President Trump was not a fan of the protection of these lands. Everything about this sort of land protection was antithetical to literally everything about him and his administration. These lands protect native artifacts, unique biodiversity, geological wonders, imperiled species and at their heart form the evolving concept of the permanent preservation of large continuous segments of wild land.

Trump saw the potential of mines, paved roads, golf courses, development opportunities, profitable tourism, and oil exploration in these lands, all of which, of course, are unsustainable for the fragile land. He also understood that conservative Utah politicians imagined the coal potential of Southern Utah, even though coal was well on its way to the marketplace graveyard.

Trump filled his administration with criminals and the corrupt - over 20 of the people he surrounded himself with during his administration have been arrested. Many of them serving jail time. But perhaps the most corrupt was Ryan Zinke, who Trump picked as Secretary of the Interior for his disdain for environmentalism, his love for coal and his desire to increase oil extraction on public lands.

On Trump’s guidance, Zinke reduced the size of Utah’s Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument by almost fifty-percent, and the nearby Bears Ears National Monument by 85%. Why did he leave Vermilion Cliffs alone? Because even conservative people in Arizona are passionate about their public land. It would have been dangerous politics. 

Zinke was trying to cut back national monuments everywhere he could get away with it. He was also going big on reversing other key environmental initiatives. Remember how California Condors almost went extinct due in part to lead poisoning? That lead poisoning came from the proliferation of lead bullets on public land, which condors digested when they consumed hunted carcasses. But Zinke, a lifetime advocate for the rights of hunters, and especially trophy hunters, quickly rescinded the laws that kept hunters from using lead bullets on public land.

He also began to make key changes to the government’s interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, changes that would ultimately allow hunters the ability to kill migratory birds such as endangered hawks and owls.

Zinke must have been having the time of his life, reversing all this progress to conserve the American west. But he was also having the time of his life living the high life, dipping so deep into the pockets of the government, going on lavish vacations on government aircraft, that he became too hot, too corrupt for even the Trump administration, and he was removed from office.

The Biden administration quickly reversed the Trump/Zinke national monument reductions, arguing they didn’t have the legal authority to reduce them, and today, all these monuments are restored to their original sizes.

One of the great benefactors of the restoration of Southern Utah’s national monuments were the paleontologists. When Escalante was originally protected in the 1990’s, it was due largely to the huge potential there for research into the Late Cretaceous period of Earth’s history. It turns out that Escalante has become the world’s most important region for the discovery of new Late Cretacous plants and animals, and those discoveries continue at a rapid pace today.

I have hours to spend alone, walking in these badlands along a great plateau. I try to place myself here in the age where this region is most known for. I blur my eyes, and I try to reconstruct this area as it might have been 66 million years ago.

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hereas the sandstone swirls of color in Vermilion Cliffs visually represented the sand dunes of 200 million years ago, the layers of rocks here can’t even hint at what this area looked like, even though they contain the evidence of that history.

This flat, sandy badland plateau dissolves away, and I imagine as hot, and unbearably humid. Morning fog sits still above a vast sea of ferns, growing in a wet, almost marsh-like sediment.

The morning light is yellow, and clouds of gnats hang in the sky above hammocks of conifer groves. I am walking towards one of those groves now, and I can see the understory of giant tree ferns and cycads.

These vast floodplains are interrupted by sluggish rivers, which zigzag through the plains of ferns. This whole region has now broken away from Pangaea, but North America has yet to reveal itself. Instead, Southern Utah resides in Laramidia, a long micro-continent roughly representing today’s Pacific Northwest, Desert Southwest and Baja Peninsula. To the east is a vast, shallow sea that would later become the Midwest and Intermountain West.

As I approach the hammock, I notice a long, fallen conifer log, sticking out into the watery world of ferns. Angiosperm vines with large, 9-inch violet flowers grow up the side of the fallen tree. These flowers emanate the stench of organic decay, inviting pollinating flies.

The flies attract a small mammal, comfortable scurrying along the sides of tree trunks. It resembles something like a potato-sized shrew, moving its snout to sniff at the air. Its diet consists entirely of insects; it’s an expert at finding flies by the scent of the pollen that attracts them.

But the insectivore is on edge; there is another scent in the air. A dinosaur, about a foot and a half tall and with a thin, long four-foot tail, ascends the log and springs into action.

The dinosaur, unknown to the fossil record, may be a type of theropod, and is nearly as thin as its long tail. It features razor-like teeth, and it can run like the wind.

The insectivore detects his presence before he leaps, and races along the side of the log.

Sometimes, we like to think that most of what makes us human is unique to us. But this dinosaur feels a rush of excitement in the chase, in the hunt. His focus is entirely on this chase. He darts swiftly down that log.

The insectivore has a flap of black skin on his forelimbs. As he senses a direct threat to his life, he bounds into the air, opening up that skin into something resembling wings, and he glides.

The dinosaur also has forelimbs with a membranous skin. All of this, taking place in a matter of seconds, unfolds with each creature in the air; a gliding chase.

This chase ends with the insectivore finding refuge in the deep, wet underleaves of the ferns.

It is easy to think of the Late Cretaceous as the time right before that meteor hit, ending most life on Earth. But that event is still a million years away. This dance, between dinosaur and angiosperm and mammal, had already been accruing over unimaginable millenia. This dinosaur, and this shrew-like insectivore, will not go on to become birds and bats; but they are both part of many lineages evolving towards the advantages of gliding and flight.

I momentarily lose my way along the path, which forces me out of my daydream. Is there any value in these little historical stories I tell myself? Does it achieve anything? 

Actually, for me, it makes these red ledges come to life, and gives me a yearning to fill in more gaps about how this vivid rainbow country tells the story of life on Earth.

 

Supporting Material

Documentary covers the Kanab Controversy

This 48 minute documentary covers the 2006 controversy over family values in Kanab. Includes footage of Mayor Kim Lawson and Matt Livingston Omega.

Books by Matt Livingston Omega

Matt continues his passion for journalism as an author. Matt Livingston, You Liar! was published in 2021. Covid Miracle 318 will be published in December 2023, and Alpha to Omega will be published in 2024.

Articles on Paleontology and Condors

This Medium article shares some examples of unique dinosaur species discovered in this region.

Shortly after I wrote these notes, condor researchers discovered grave die-offs in the Arizona population due to avian flu. The USDA is attempting to vaccinate the imperiled population against the disease.