The Oldest and The Youngest
Natural Bridges National Monument was Utah’s first National Park Service site, established in 1908. Bear’s Ears National Monument is the most recent addition, established in December of 2016, just a few short, yet controversial months ago.
We came here to do one specific hike in the Natural Bridges canyon that we hadn’t been able to do the last time we were here because of monsoons. We ended up doing four amazing treks into the wilderness, mostly in the Bear’s Ears Monument.
These are probably Utah’s least showy NPS areas, at least on the surface. The natural bridges are set well down in the canyon and photograph poorly from the overlooks. The deep canyons that criss-cross Bear’s Ears are hidden by massive mesas covered with juniper and pinion forest. You could easily drive right through, clueless to the treasure trove a short, or long, hike away.
Sipapu is the second largest natural bridge in the world at 204 feet long and 210 feet high, but until you stand beneath it you cannot truly understand its enormity. It and the other two bridges in Natural Bridges NM were carved by streams within a winding canyon of pale sandstone deeply striped by desert varnish. This was the hike we came back to do. We descended three ladders, several staircases and steep slickrock switchbacks to the canyon floor. After checking out Sipapu, we headed down canyon, stopping frequently to marvel at the beauty of the canyon before arriving at Kachina Bridge the youngest of the three spans. Though its massive size made it difficult to photograph, standing beneath it was impressive.
The Grand Gulch Wilderness Study Area (c’mon Congress designate more actual wilderness out here!) has over a hundred miles of labyrinthian canyons that are mostly explored on long-distance backpacking trips. We opted for several long day hikes suggested by our camp neighbors and the rangers at the Kane Gulch Ranger Station.
Why Bear’s Ears National Monument? A number of reasons. On our 25 miles of hiking there, we saw eight remarkable Ancestral Puebloan sites; the monument contains an estimated 200,000. We were especially stunned by the massive amounts of pottery shards, of ample size, at one site in particular. And, we were surprised by rock art in new and different colors at each of the sites we visited.
In a lot of ways not much has changed in the Bears Ears since President Obama made the designation four months ago—cattle are still grazing on the mesas like they have for a century, folks are still driving out the 4x4 tracks to distant trailheads and hiking and backpacking in the canyons. Though the kind folks working at the ranger station did tell us that visitation has more than doubled this spring, so that’s a significant change, both for their workload and the local economy. Clearly, with Bears Ears grabbing headlines, it’s drawing a great deal more interest from folks all over the world.
Why did Obama, as one of his last acts as president, safeguard this land with monument status? First and foremost, it means protection from open pit coal and uranium mining and new oil drilling. Some in the state of Utah, and those who work for big energy, have been eagerly and greedily wanting to get their hands on this land for years and years and years. By preventing the destruction of this land by big energy, Obama saved the ancestral home of many American Indians. Bear’s Ears was home to over twenty-two Native American tribes, many of whom have been lobbying for the creation of the monument since the 1920’s. Now that the land is a monument, they will have more say over the protection of their sacred sites.
For us, the privilege to hike deep into these canyons, to sit quietly on the slickrock outside an ancient kiva and gaze back over the canyon floor, to listen to a fledgling raptor’s cry, to honor those who lived on and cherished the land before us, this is why we appreciate our nation’s greatest legacy—its parks and monuments. There’s just no good reason to drill or mine here, none whatsoever, or to rescind its monument status.
Please come to the Bear’s Ears Monument and see for yourself why this place is special. It is beautiful in photographs but photos alone simply cannot capture the true magnificence of this place. We also encourage you to write to your legislators, especially Secretary of the Interior Zinke, about the importance of protecting our parks and monuments, at this moment they are in more peril than at any other time in the last century.
