American Outback

Abstract

American Outback Leath Tonino (bio) JUST Saturday morning, snow falling soft and white and everywhere. I should be out skiing, building a snowman, relishing this dynamic spring weather, this fleeting absurd life, this body, this earth, while it lasts. Nope. I'm YouTubing on the couch, watching C-SPAN, a testimony before the US House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Federal Lands. Watching the video for the umpteenth time. Watching it and grinding my molars. The man testifying is mustached, in a dark cowboy hat and dark blazer. He sits at a glossy wooden table, thick hands folded together, voice booming with confidence. A piece of me appreciates that his speech is firm and that he is devoted to a place; I suspect we would manage fine if somehow—over breakfast at a cafe in rural Utah, sunnyside eggs and toast, chitchat about Grandad's cattle operation and the local school, pass the salt—we could avoid discussing politics. Big somehow. This rancher, this county commissioner, has flown to D.C. for a specific reason: to oppose the GSENM, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. "Probably twenty percent of that monument is visited …" "But eighty percent of a landmass like that …" "If you don't believe me, come on out, we'll go out and …" I'm refilling my coffee, refreshing the video, banging the spacebar to halt the man mid-sentence, banging it to start him pontificating again. My girlfriend, Sophia, pokes her head into the room and rolls her eyes at this caffeinated Saturday madness. With the dullest of pencils, I'm gouging a notepad. Banging the spacebar, banging the spacebar. Double-checking to ensure a verbatim transcription. "And I'm sorry, people are not going to travel from all over the world to look at sagebrush and regular BLM rangeland …" "There's no tourism value …" "It is just BLM rangeland like you'll find anywhere in the western United States …" Since the presidential proclamation was signed in December of 2017, I've been monitoring the dismemberment of GSENM—the "American outback," to borrow [End Page 68] a longtime wilderness activist's apt nickname. Under the pretense of reining in government overreach, and with dubious legal authority, the monument's borders were redrawn: corners lopped off, corridors severed, protected zones reduced by almost fifty percent. Stroke-of-the-ceremonial-pen style, nearly one million acres were opened to potential abuse from drills, dozers, pavement, noise, industry, extraction, dollars, the gamut. That's bad. But this video, this man, this word echoing after I shut the laptop and drain the coffee and step into the yard to dazedly gaze, to drift with drifting flakes—this is worse. "It is just BLM rangeland" sets off in me a deeper indignation, a more philosophical and fundamental disgust. Argh, the worldview of just. Argh, the self-serving unreflective anthropocentrism of just. Argh, the crime just commits against scarps and rincons, warblers and eagles, coyotes and mice, ferns and cactuses, stillness and silence, thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands (upon thousands!) of pebbles in any given gulch, each pebble a planet, a sphere, rounded and smooth and beyond perfection, beyond any idea in any human mind, any song in any human heart. Snow dampening my hair, I return to the couch, and though it's tempting to continue prowling C-SPAN, I opt instead for Shakespeare, asking Sophia if she'd like to join me in a rousing recitation. Act 3. Scene 1. Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders. ________ Charley Bulletts, Cultural Resources Director, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Shares a Few Thoughts in a Phone Interview Two Weeks Before I Depart "Old cowboys love telling stories about their family on the land." "It's a beautiful thing to be white and come to the West." "There was so much open land, so much land that was unclaimed." "What's not beautiful is what happened to the people who already lived here." "Just to have a conversation with you my ancestors had to survive." "They had to hide and survive." [End Page 69] TO-DO LIST Pull my trusty GSENM...