Nature

On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants.

Douglas Tallamy’s first book, “Bringing Nature Home,” awakened thousands of readers to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives. In this new book, Tallamy takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation. “Nature’s Best Hope” shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. Talllamy says that because this approach relies on the initiatives of private individuals, it is immune from the whims of government policy. Even more important, it’s practical, effective, and easy.

In the span of a single lifetime, light pollution stemming from Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has severed the connection with the stars that we’ve had since the dawn of time. With the nocturnal biosphere significantly altered, light’s anthropogenic influence has compelled millions of people to seek out the last remaining dark skies.

The Monarch and Other Winged Wonders Festival will happen on Thursday in Nibley. We’ll preview the event next time on Access Utah. We’ll learn about Monarch butterflies, bats, bees, fireflies, night pollinators, dragonflies and birds. We’ll talk about the decline in some of these species and how we can help. And we’ll discuss how being in nature can improve our health and well-being.

Gary Paul Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.

In a recent article for Terrain.org titled “In Defense of Pinon Nut Nation,” writer and photographer Stephen Trimble says “Piñons and junipers are the size of humans. We don’t look down at them, casually, and we don’t gaze up in awe. We are equal in scale. ‘Tree’ usually means tall, vertical, but these trees often are round. They have the reserved warmth of a Native grandmother. When you live in piñon-juniper woodland, you live with the trees, not under them. You participate, you reside."

In the span of a single lifetime, light pollution stemming from Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has severed the connection with the stars that we’ve had since the dawn of time. With the nocturnal biosphere significantly altered, light’s anthropogenic influence has compelled millions of people to seek out the last remaining dark skies.

Every year for Earth Day, we check in with writer and photographer Stephen Trimble, author of “Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America,” and many other books. Next time on Access Utah, Stephen Trimble joins us along with Terri Martin, Intermountain West Organizer with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance; and Jesse Prentice-Dunn, Policy Director with the Center for Western Priorities.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in the face of global climate breakdown. So how might we develop the inner resolve to confront it? Full Ecology, a collaboration between social-cultural psychologist Mary Clare and longtime science writer Gary Ferguson, suggests a path forward. Breaking the modern impulse to see humans as separate from nature, Clare and Ferguson encourage us to learn from the “supremely methodical and highly improvisational” natural systems that touch our lives. True change, they argue, begins with us stopping and questioning assumptions about our place in the world. 

“I began my writing career by exploring the tracks humans have left in nature. Now I’m mostly interested in the tracks nature leaves in us.” That’s author Gary Ferguson. He says that nature provides beauty, mystery and community, traits that each of us very much needs. He is the author of 25 books.

As closures as part of the efforts to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic continue, Utahns are taking to the outdoors in full force. 

In CONFLUENCE: NAVIGATING THE PERSONAL & POLITICAL ON RIVERS OF THE NEW WEST, paddler and journalist Zak Podmore takes readers down Western rivers and deep into some of the most pressing environmental and social justice issues of our time.

As efforts to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic limit public gatherings and lead to closures, many Utahns have headed to the mountains for a break. But, as spring arrives and temperatures increase, so does avalanche danger.  

Utah’s national parks are having more visitors, but unfortunately, they are leaving more trash. 

Gary Paul Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.

In this fresh and introspective collection of essays, Julia Corbett examines nature in our lives with all of its ironies and contradictions.

Each story delves into an overlooked aspect of our relationship with nature—insects, garbage, backyards, noise, open doors, animals, and language—and how we cover our tracks. Corbett confronts the owner of a high-end market who insists on keeping his doors open in all temperatures, and takes us on a trip to a new mall with a replica of a trout stream that once flowed nearby.

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat.

Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves.

Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the 1920s. But in recent decades, conservationists have brought wolves back to the Rockies, igniting a battle over the very soul of the West.

Iconic Utah outfitter Ken Sleight began his river-guiding career in Glen Canyon during the mid-1950s, just as the Glen Canyon Dam blueprints jumped from the drawing board to remote desert terrain. The pulse of the Colorado River through the canyon would soon be halted by a cement wall and Glen Canyon backfilled with water. Sleight knew the condition of the canyon was terminal.

In this fresh and introspective collection of essays, Julia Corbett examines nature in our lives with all of its ironies and contradictions.

Each story delves into an overlooked aspect of our relationship with nature—insects, garbage, backyards, noise, open doors, animals, and language—and how we cover our tracks. Corbett confronts the owner of a high-end market who insists on keeping his doors open in all temperatures, and takes us on a trip to a new mall with a replica of a trout stream that once flowed nearby.

“I began my writing career by exploring the tracks humans have left in nature. Now I’m mostly interested in the tracks nature leaves in us.” That’s author Gary Ferguson. He says that nature provides beauty, mystery and community, traits that each of us very much needs. He is the author of 25 books. We talked with Gary Ferguson a few months ago about his latest “Land on Fire.” Today we’ll talk with him about “The Carry Home” a haunting meditation on wilderness, conservation, and grief, written following the death of his wife in a canoeing accident.

Gary Paul Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.

After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future.

And, incredibly, we're running out of it. 

The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from Colorado's headwaters, to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and rv parks, to the spot near the U.S.-Mexico border where the river runs dry.

"The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places," features William Atkins' travels across five continents over three years, visiting deserts both iconic and little-known to discover a realm as much internal as physical. His journey takes him to the Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter and Australia’s nuclear-test grounds; the dry Aral Sea of Kazakhstan and ‘sand seas’ of China’s volatile north-west; the contested borderlands of Arizona and the riotous Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert; and the ancient monasteries of Egypt’s Eastern Desert.

James A. McLaughlin grew up in rural Virginia and lives in the Wasatch Range east of Salt Lake City. His debut novel “Bearskin” is getting rave reviews. He joins us for the hour next time on Access Utah.

There are people who can capture beautiful scenery by painting on canvas, using film photography, and with digital technology.  And these forms of art can be visually stunning.  But there is a unique perspective of visualizing when written words are read, allowing one’s mind to see not only the exterior of a scene but the interior heart intended by the writer.

“I began my writing career by exploring the tracks humans have left in nature. Now I’m mostly interested in the tracks nature leaves in us.” That’s author Gary Ferguson. He says that nature provides beauty, mystery and community, traits that each of us very much needs. He is the author of 25 books. We talked with Gary Ferguson a few months ago about his latest “Land on Fire.” Today we’ll talk with him about “The Carry Home” a haunting meditation on wilderness, conservation, and grief, written following the death of his wife in a canoeing accident.