Jonathan P. Thompson is a son of the Four Corners. He is a journalist and writer, recently penning the book River of Lost Souls (non-fiction Torrey House 2018) and Behind the Slickrock Curtain (fiction Lost Souls Press Sept. 2020). I am co-founder of Torrey House Press and while I previously followed him as an extra savvy writer of the West, I got to know him personally when he published with us. In August of this year he and Torrey House are bringing out his next book, SAGEBRUSH EMPIRE: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. I have had a look at a first draft and am thrilled that more of his writing and perspective will soon hit the stores.
We are sick and Nature is in charge. Is her wildness also our preservation?
It is not quite five in the morning and a rose colored light is starting to fill the room. I’m in Cooke City, Montana in early June 2013 with Torrey House Press publisher Kirsten Johanna Allen in bed beside me and THP author Susan Imhoff Bird asleep in the other room. The cabin is ancient and in poor repair, the bed is lumpy. We are in Yellowstone to start research on Susan’s book Howl, of Woman and Wolf and I am wide awake. I have a question on my mind. What the hell did Thoreau mean, exactly, when he said, “In wildness is the preservation of the world?”
Cooke City in a June dawn.
Next door to the cabin is a coffee shop that makes its own baked goods. The proprietor opens the door at 5:00 because she is there with her ovens preparing for the day and I know they have internet. I get dressed, grab coat, hat and iPad and head over. There is still snow in the crevices of the craggy peaks surrounding the town, just visible in first light. Wispy clouds are pink and orange. The warm smells of hot coffee and bear claws great me along with the proprietor at the cafe. She’s my age with blonde hair pulled up loosely on top of her head, busy with her baking trays. A steaming cup next to the iPad and I log on, type in my question to the oracle that is Google Search. To connect to that question, in this place, with such comfort and beauty around me and a day of wolf watching ahead is vaguely thrilling. Continue reading →
I remember pondering in my excellent high school civics class whether something like Nazism could happen here. The common wisdom and a pervading sense of pride and patriotism was that it could not. But the Germans I knew all seemed like good people. And smart. I look back those forty plus years and give myself credit. With trepidation I thought, sure, it could probably happen here, too.
Sadly, here we are, our constitutional democracy is crumbling under a relentless assault. Republicans today are failing in a similar manner to how decent Germans failed in the 1930’s.
Publish books with progressive ideas promoting love of the land
Promote and support women in leadership
Build a blue oasis in a red, red state
I am doing pretty well on all three. Torrey House Press is having a record year and is building a terrific staff to keep expanding its impact. I plan on raising a cool $1 million to help them further build capacity. The board, besides me, is all women and so is the staff. And to a small but hopefully useful extent I levered my observatory to help the town of Torrey, Utah become an International Dark Association certified dark sky community.
Utah is having a long, dry, and warm fall. The region is under a massive atmospheric high pressure which is typical in the Intermountain West in the fall but this one is lasting longer than usual. The big high pressure is the same that makes for down slope winds out of the Sierra Nevada mountains and fans California’s big fires. If those guys would only rake their forests.
Penance
It has been warm but I knew there was a reason I was procrastinating turning off the sprinklers. Two or three years ago I had to replace the sprinkler system’s stop and waste valve. It is four feet or so underground and is a miserable job. I was a little worried about dirt getting into the access tube. Sure enough, when I finally got to the chore this past Monday there seemed to be too much dirt in the tube and the valve wouldn’t turn. I tried to think of ways to get dirt out of the bottom of a four foot tube but was coming up short. I finally decided I would have to dig and try to clear things out. Just as narrow a hole as possible.
