U of L's Lone Ranger
Kindred spirits long before they met, Edward Abbey and University of Louisville graduate Jim Stiles each found paradise and perspective in the remote canyons of southeastern Utah.
By John Chamberlain
While Abbey, an environmentalist icon, discovered his muse in the arid, open spaces of the West, Stiles met his exploring the woods and wilds of Hikes Lane in Louisville and floating down the Salt River past the firing ranges of Ft. Knox (definitely without any permission of parents and authorities).
As impressed as he was with the vistas from the bluffs above the Salt River, Stiles would never see the world in the same way after driving out west with his family as a youngster. As the 7,000-mile trip unfolded outside the car window, he recalls becoming hooked.
"The West stayed in my blood," he says.
 Jim Stiles, former park ranger and now editor of Moab's Canyon Country Zephyr, gets his point across with his words, illustrations and photographs regarding the changing, shrinking wilderness areas of remote southeastern Utah. He shot the "Cathedral in the Desert" formation this spring as it emerged after 40 years from the depths of Lake Powell, visible due to drought and a 150-foot drop in the waters impounded by the Glen Canyon Dam. |
Also at an early age, Stiles got a close up view of development's toll on nature in the fast-growing suburbs of Louisville. One morning his world and horizon changed before his eyes as earthmovers and bulldozers moved into the nearby woods to carve out new housing. Hearing the ripping of roots and clang of massive machines, Stiles remembers saying to his dad, "This isn't right."
He would eventually say the same thing to many others.
Although he became an expert on the trails, caves and hideaways of Louisville and eventually earned a degree in business from U of L, Stiles still wandered among the vivid images of a strange land far away. He often sought release by heading west whenever possible, including a semester spent on a motorcycle rather than in a classroom. During the trip, he happened upon a familiar face.
"Fill it up, Dr. Ekstrom?" he asked an astonished U of L administrator at a filling station outside Jackson, Wy.
After graduation he headed out west for good, first settling for janitorial work in Jackson and other outposts before landing a job as a seasonal ranger at the Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah. Home to thousands of natural sandstone arches, balanced rocks and formations, this remote location still looks much like it did 10,000 years ago when hunter-gatherers migrated into the area at the end of the Ice Age.
Among the rocks at the Arches were those on which Abbey sat and contemplated existence and exploitation of the land as a ranger in the 1960s. Abbey's classic Desert Solitaire created both controversy and a devoted following as he challenged the invasion of oil drillers, miners and tourists--people who could not leave the landscape alone.
Stiles describes himself at the time as an "Abbey groupster, one of those annoying young eco-freaks who drove a VW microbus covered with inflammatory bumper stickers."
During his years as a ranger, Stiles not only met Abbey, but also joined his circle of friends. They shared a passion for the land. Abbey chose Stiles, who was a cartoonist for the Cardinal in his senior year at U of L, to do the illustrations for his collection of essays published in the book The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West.
It would be Stiles' last foray into publishing. In 1989 he left the National Parks Service and started the Canyon Country Zephyr, an alternative newspaper that provides an outlet for his views and art. He launched the publication with no money and paid for the first issue by finding 100 people who would pay for a $10 subscription in advance.
Ever since he has been making people mad six times a year with the bimonthly Zephyr. His mission is to preserve the West from those who would "develop" it. Subscribers from all 50 states read the Zephyr and some 15,000 visit his web site (www.canyoncountryzephyr.com) every month.
Lynn Winter, owner of Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville, is a long-distance advertiser in the Zephyr. Her ad proudly states that the restaurant is "Still Beyond Moab: Worth a 1,500 mile drive." Winter find Stiles' "maverick voice" passionate, eloquent and on target. Stiles says his paper is as weird as her funky restaurant.
Almost all the advertisements are illustrated in Stiles' unique style, including ones for Moab's Oldest Legal Brewery" and the "world's first wind-powered radio station."
Once concerned primarily about the damage created by mining and ranching, Stiles now often writes about the impact of industrial tourism and adventure marketing that attracts "nature lovers" by the thousands in what he describes as the "the Greening of the Wilderne$$." He has a book under way on the subject, tentatively titled Desert Tarnished: Moab in the Nouveau West.
