September 2020

The owls came to me this summer. I think it’s because of Covid—whether they have always come and I only noticed them because I’ve been home so much or because, as some friends of a more mystical bent suggest, they have chosen me to bring good tidings. …

There’s a word for it in the Potawatomi language: puhpowee, the force that causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight. We’re lucky to have fungi—a whole kingdom of organisms ready to help us spring a trapdoor out of the ecological corner we’v …

Salt Lake City has a fancy new recycling plant to sort the contents of your blue bin. Waste Management, the city’s recycling vendor, recently opened a $17 million Materials Recovery Facility for single-stream waste with the capacity to process more tha …

Utah Open Lands is working towards a September 10 deadline to purchase 27 acres of open space at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The land could become a regional trailhead for the Bonneville Shoreline Trail or it could become an upscale housing …

Osho Zen Tarot:  Ripeness, Integration, Sorrow Medicine Cards: Hawk, Crow, Wolf Mayan Oracle: Realm Shift, Ahau Ancient Egyptian Tarot: Three of Disks, Three of Wands, Five of Wands Aleister Crowley Deck: Failure, Dominion, Queen of Wands Healing Earth …

September 1  Sunrise 6:54 am, Sunset 7:59 pm. Av. high: 78 degrees; Av. low: 58. September 2  National Preparedness Month. Make an evacuation kit for your pets: leash, crate, health records, any meds, i.d./microchip documentation, photographs of you an …

Maybe if we could start over and rebrand 2020 as the Corvid Pandademic it would seem cuter and tolerable. Who wouldn’t like to be overwhelmed with frolicking magpies and pandas? As a bonus, the world’s complexities really would be black and white. The …

Like so many traditions, the 18-day meditation retreat I attend each year at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was not to be in 2020. The retreat has become a touchstone for my partner and me. It’s a time to take a holiday from our daily routines and remem …

As the tomatoes give way to endless bowls of salad greens and carrots growing sweeter as the nights grow cooler, the boss level gardener always has enough to share. Simple in theory. Yet for those of us in the Mountain West, these seasons can be a wild …

The recent massive influx of single-use disposable waste, often plastic—masks, gloves and hand sanitizer bottles in addition to quantities of single-use medical supplies—has literally transformed the world. In recent weeks, Covid litter in public space …

When Menakem was a young boy, his grandmother would often ask him to rub her sore hands. One day, he asked why her hands were so different from his, why her fingers were so thick. She replied that she began picking cotton on a sharecroppers farm when s …

Something to celebrate! Great American Outdoors Act Becomes Law The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), signed into law on August 4, is something big to celebrate! This landmark legislation achieves two major conservation goals: it provides badly neede …

The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), signed into law on August 4, is something big to celebrate! This landmark legislation achieves two major conservation goals: it provides badly needed funds to tackle a burgeoning National Parks maintenance backlo …

300+ groups call to remove acting BLM director W.P. Pendley’s nomination for permanent post More than 300 citizen groups signed a strongly worded letter telling the U.S. Senate that they have a “moral duty” to reject president Trump’s nomination of Wil …

The Utah BLM has been working hard to put up signs for 17 new Wilderness Areas in the San Rafael Swell designated by the John D. Dingell Act of 2019. The actual management of these areas won’t change much since they were already Wilderness Study Areas. …

BLM acting director William Perry Pendley (see left) announced in July that Greg Sheehan has been appointed Utah state director for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  Sheehan has deep ties to groups that promote trophy hunting and privatization of w …

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has removed controversial parcels near Arches and Canyonland National Parks from a massive Utah BLM oil and gas lease sale scheduled for September. Thanks to intense public pressure, BLM withdrew all parcels from the …

Bicycles are not allowed in designated Wilderness areas, so a few segments of the Bonneville Shoreline trail are off-limits to bikes, hemmed in by private property on one side and wilderness on the other. In July, Representative Curtis (R-UT-3) and Sen …

A legislative audit of the Utah Division of Air Quality (DAQ) found that the agency is generally performing well. The budget for clean air programs and research has increased significantly since 2015, which is good news. By way of improvement, the audi …