Cows and Land

When I was 13 we stopped by Bryce Canyon for a quick visit on the way back from my grandma's house in Kansas. As we looked over Inspiration Point, I read a sign about the history of Bryce Canyon. There was a quote from a Mormon farmer back in the late 1800s where he described Bryce Canyon as a "helluva place to lose a cow."

I looked at my mom in shock. "He's Mormon and he swore!" I said.

"He was a farmer. Farmers just swear sometimes," my mom said.

I was still floored by his language and her nonchalant acceptance of it. Still, it was pretty funny to think of cows wandering around among those hoodoos.

***

A few years later, I hiked the Wellsvilles with my friends. We went up the Deep Canyon way but since we hiked to Wellsville Cone it made sense to go down the Coldwater Canyon route. As we went down the trail, I noticed more and more cow manure. Coldwater Lake was near the end of the trail, and it didn't live up to its name. It seemed more like a tepid, slimy pond that belonged to cows. I couldn't believe that they were allowed to graze up here where we were hiking.

***

Then that summer we went down to Escalante as a family. There were a lot of beautiful slot canyons that we eagerly frolicked through. There was Lower Calf Creek. But there was also a lot of nothing. A lot of nothing.

"This doesn't all have to be National Monument," my mom would say as we drove through the nothing. One night we ate at a local diner. We had learned by then to eat early since everything, even grocery stores, closed by 7 or 8. The owner was really friendly and talked about life in Escalante. The high school had 114 kids grades 7-12. They had done well in 1A basketball that year. A girl in the town was at a treatment center in St. George. since she had gone blind due to anorexia, but she would be okay. There wasn't much fun to do there. My dad thought that was strange since we had driven hours to have fun there.

***

My dad is a connoisseur of small towns in Utah. His favorite is Panguitch, where everything is orderly and friendly. "You know how you come into towns, and the outskirts are just sort of unkempt? Panguitch isn't like that," he explained. There are many other beautiful towns in rural Utah he has a soft spot for. Teasdale. Fountain Green. Elsinore. And I know what he means -- when you drive through the farmland there in early summer and your lungs are filled with the scent of sprinklers and soil, you feel like you could stay forever.

But as I talk to friends from such towns, I hear of quirks. "All they like to do in [some town in Sanpete County] is blowing stuff up and fornicating!" someone from a nearby larger town told me indignantly. Friends talked of friends going to prom with married polygamists. Kids are addicted to their phones there, too. Rural Utah does not seem as idyllic when you think of raising kids there, or going to the doctor.

***

 "You know, ranchers care about conservation too," my mother-in-law remarked once as we drove back from Rock Creek. "We have to treat the land right, rotate things, put the right nutrients into it so we can use it year after year. We're invested in it." As we drove, we would cross cattle guards, and the brief rattling would exacerbate my carsickness. It always seemed strange to me that cattle guards were everywhere -- in the Uintas, in Logan Canyon, in Provo Canyon. I guess cows were just everywhere.

That was when I finally figured out what most of Utah was made up of. All those remote places I had gone growing up -- sand dunes, geode beds, salt flats -- were BLM land. Some BLM land was leased out to farmers and ranchers. Some land was owned outright by the farmers and ranchers. Native American reservations spanned swaths of arid land in Eastern Utah, a small remnant of what they used to have. But every single acre of Utah land belonged to somebody. Mostly to the federal government.

***

Many times when I've gone to Duchesne, I've heard the same sentiments. "People from the East Coast just don't get it. They think land is where you go play. For us, it's where you work, where you live." My experience with land has been primarily playing -- hopping around slot canyons, posing at National Parks, and swimming in lakes. Kevin grew up with land as work -- moving sprinkler pipe, going on cattle drives, and baling hay. And then there are Native Americans for whom land is worship, where they receive spiritual sustenance and connection with their ancestors.

We rely on land for so many of our needs -- for food, for fuel, for sacred space, for recreation, for our homes. And I think the land can provide all of that, as long as we are willing to use it wisely, and as long as we listen together.