RED ROCK STORIES
edited by Stephen Trimble
July 2017 | Nonfiction | 978-1-937226-79-4 | 223 pp | $21.95
​
STEPHEN TRIMBLE was a park ranger at Arches and Capitol Reef national parks in his twenties and has since published more than 20 books. He received the Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for photography and conservation and a Wallace Stegner Centennial Fellowship at the University of Utah Tanner Humanities Center. In 1995, Trimble co–compiled with Terry Tempest Williams the landmark book of advocacy, Testimony: Writers of the West Speak on Behalf of Utah Wilderness—the model for Red Rock Testimony. He teaches writing in the University of Utah Honors College and makes his home in Salt Lake City and in Torrey, Utah.
​
ABOUT THE EDITOR
​
Red Rock Stories conveys spiritual and cultural values of Utah’s canyon country through essays and poems of writers whose births span seven decades. First delivered to decision makers in Washington as a limited–edition chapbook, this art–as–advocacy book explores the fierce beauty of and the dangers to ecological and archaeological integrity in this politically embattled corner of wild America.
PRAISE FOR RED ROCK STORIES
​
“Utah has been my home for over half a century. Native Americans have inhabited these landscapes since time immemorial. The writers in Red Rock Stories capture that bond in essays and poems that run as deep as the canyons of the Colorado River.”
—ROBERT REDFORD
​
“In voices as rich and varied as the land itself, Red Rock Stories converges upon a vision for a relationship with the living land which is both ancient and urgent, a healing vision where the land and the people are linked by mutual responsibility.”
—ROBIN WALL KIMMERER, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and founder and director of the
SUNY Center for Native Peoples and the Environment
“If you haven’t been there, these words will take you. If you have, drink these stories, poems, remembrances, essays like rain from a water pocket and remember.”
—CRAIG CHILDS, author of Apocalyptic Planet and House of Rain
“There is no more foundational element of democracy than shared public lands. Whatever we can do to defend them, we must, and then more. In conversation, in thought, in deed, our voices must rise—in good and necessary efforts like Red Rock Stories.”
—RICK BASS, author of For a Little While and Why I Came West
“Whether speaking of us Millennials and our hunger for justice or the millennial-old respect that land has for its Native peoples, this collection is a promise.”
—MORGAN CURTIS, storyteller and climate activist with Climate Journey and Our Children’s Trust
“Public lands accessible to all nurture a free people, of diverse cultures, some with ancient bonds to such landscapes. They are not a luxury or a waste. Try running an engine with gas but no oil. Also, please read this book.”
—DAVID QUAMMEN, author of Yellowstone: A Journey through America’s Wild Heart
RED ROCK STORIES TABLE OF CONTENTS
Charles Wilkinson
INTRODUCTION
Simon Ortiz
RIGHT OF WAY
​
Kevin T. Jones
THE MAN WITH A HEART OF STONE
Jana Richman
THE LAND OF NO USE
David Gessner
THE FREEDOM OF RESTRAINT
Karen Shepherd
THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
Regina Lopez–Whiteskunk
IT'S TIME TO HEAL BEARS EARS
Lauret Savoy
ON COMPROMISED GROUND
Christpher Cokinos
STONE THAT LEAPS
Kathleen Dean Moore
WHAT SHALL WE GIVE THE CHILDREN?
Jen Jackson Quintano
MEMORY
Terry Tempest Williams
TIME
Jim Enote
A PLACE FOR MEDIATION
Alastair Lee Bitsoi
SHASH JAA' FOLLOWS WHEREVER I GO
Juan Palma
THE WILDNESS IN NATURE BINDS US TO THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
Shonto Begay
THE VIEW FROM THE MESA
Mary Ellen Hannibal
THE UR–BEAR
Mary Sojourner
BEAR'S EARS
​
Amy Irvine
SEEING RED
Thomas Lowe Fleischner
THE GRACE OF WILDNESS
David Lee
PRELUDE
George Handley
FAITH AND THE LAND
Brooke Williams
LEASE UTU91481
Anne Terashima
WE [HEART] WILDERNESS
Jacqueline Keeler
IT IS THE LAND THAT TELLS THE STORY
Alison Hawthorne Deming
THE NATURALISTS
Michelle Nijhuis
WHAT THE TORTOISE TAUGHT ME
​
Chip Ward
WHOLE AND HOLY
Ann Whittaker
WHEN THE DESERT MORNING RISES
Gary Paul Nabhan
UP BETWEEN THE BEARS EARS
Bruce Babbitt
IT'S TIME TO ACT
Mark Udall
I AM A SON OF THE COLORADO PLATEAU
Stephen Trimble
WE COME OUT DANCING TOGETHER