Where The Silence Still Holds – For Now

Far from paved roads and close to extinction

Sunset at Bears Ears National Monument

Two weeks ago, I called your attention to Buffalo Gap National Grassland—a place that scratches that restless itch we all get for something vast, empty, and beautiful. Today, I want to talk about a place that feels worlds away from paved roads, parking lots, and streetlights. A place that’s rugged and foreboding in the best possible way. A place that’s vanishing.

I want to talk about Bears Ears.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend several days exploring Bears Ears, winding my way through a fraction of its vastness, following narrow dirt roads that snake across the mesas and disappear into the canyons. It’s not an easy place. The land doesn’t bend to accommodate you. You have to come prepared. A spare tire, plenty of water, and a healthy respect for the fact that here, you’re not in charge.

One evening, Will and I found ourselves near the Notch, a break in the craggy red cliffs where the land falls away into the vast expanse of the Dark Canyon Wilderness. We sat there looking out as the sun dipped below the horizon, stretching shadows over the slickrock. The land stretched unbroken, except for the winding dirt road, seemingly endless in every direction. A lone raven drifted above us, riding the lingering thermals from the rocks, still releasing the day’s heat into the evening air. It was the only sign of life we could see in any direction.

And in that moment, I remember thinking how lucky we were. How rare this kind of emptiness is. How little of it remains. There was no entrance station or visitor center or gift shop or developed campground. No fences or pavement or power lines. Just land more or less as it’s been for thousands of years.

But the modern world hasn’t forgotten about Bears Ears. It never does.

Many Republican leaders in Utah see the state’s federal lands (which don’t belong to the state and never have) as political favors to be handed over to the fossil fuel industry that bankrolls their campaigns. This, despite the fact that Utah residents overwhelmingly support keeping public lands the way they are.

Of course Bears Ears has already been gutted once before, its protections slashed under the first Trump administration despite massive public opposition. Fortunately, the Biden administration restored the monument before any real damage could be done. But let’s not kid ourselves. Bears Ears will be gutted again, and it may well be worse than last time. This administration will carve it up piece by piece, fast-tracking extraction leases and erasing its wildness with roads, noise, and industry.

Because that’s the thing about a place like Bears Ears. It is too big, too beautiful, and too full of what industry calls ‘resources’ to be left alone.

But Bears Ears is more than just land. It’s home to some of the most priceless cultural and archaeological sites in the United States—ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and sacred places that have stood for millennia. It’s a landscape that holds the stories of countless generations of Native peoples, whose ancestors walked these canyons long before the first borders were drawn on a map.

When we let places like this be stripped, mined, and paved over, we don’t just lose land—we lose the few remaining places where solitude, beauty, and history still exist undisturbed. We lose what makes this country truly great.

I know I’m explaining bourbon to Kentuckians here (with the exception of a few spirited commenters who I really enjoy), but Bears Ears is a place worth visiting and worth remembering.

If you have the chance to see it before heavy industry stakes its claim, I recommend it.

–Jim