Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

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Layers Exposed Brooke Larsen Brooke Larsen is a writer and climate organizer from Salt Lake City. As a current student in the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, she explores the role of story in the climate justice movement. She is a Rio Mesa Young Scholar and spent the summer of 2017 cycling across the Colorado Plateau listening to stories from people on the frontlines of climate change and environmental injustice. She works for Torrey House Press and organizes with groups such as Wasatch Rising Tide, Uplift, and SustainUS. She recently won the High Country News Bell Prize for her essay “What are We Fighting For?” and was published in the anthology Red Rock Stories. Brooke graduated from Colorado College with a degree in environmental policy and researched land and water issues in the American West with the college’s State of the Rockies Project. 116 Mapping Meaning, the Journal
Layers Exposed Brooke Larsen Few can draw the boundaries of the Colorado Plateau on a map, but the senses provide direction. You know you’re in this bioregion by the feeling of rust-colored sandstone sticking to your feet. When people first walk on the iconic red rock of the Colorado Plateau, they often don’t trust their footing, not knowing that the sticky solidified sand will grip their soles. The layers of uplifted sandstone reveal the earth’s deep time in hues of salmon and burnt orange. Sandy washes, which only see water when thunderstorms bring flash floods, contrast the appearing certainty of the surrounding cliffs. Whiffs of sage picked up by howling wind remind visitors that life abounds in this high desert. Visitors flock to red rock country from across the world to see some of the United States’ most loved national parks—from Arches in southern Utah to the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. Over 60% of the region is federally-owned public land and 25% is sovereign Native land. The patchwork of land ownership between the federal government, tribes, the state, and private land owners rarely follows ecosystems or geology, but rather politics. Straight lines marking the boundaries of reservations and national parks juxtapose winding topography. State trust lands allocated during statehood leave perfect squares in a checkerboard fashion. Private land is scarce and urban areas are small. Flagstaff, the region’s largest city, is home to just over 71,000 people. My ancestors were the Mormon pioneers who colonized what is now the state of Utah six generations ago. Identifying as a sixth-generation Utahn gets one far in rural Utah, but I feel no pride in my ancestors’ genocidal acts and brutal attempts at cultural erasure. Rather, I identify my ancestry to say the politics written on the land also run in my blood. To uncover the Colorado Plateau’s layered stories, stories not in my family history, I biked 1,500 miles across the region for eight weeks in the summer of 2017, listening to stories from those on the frontlines of climate change and environmental injustice. The political boundaries on the land create narratives of contradiction that layer on top of one another, burying uncomfortable histories and perpetuating myths to appease special interests and political agendas. On the Colorado Plateau the dominant story is wild—whether that’s wilderness or the Wild West. The region’s vastness and stark beauty easily invites protectors, but the myth of pristine and romanticized cowboys also erase Native histories and ignore the horrors of settler colonialism. The forced removal of Havasupai People to protect the Grand Canyon is no more innocent than my ancestors’ attempt to squash Native culture and supplant it with their own. Beyond the wild, the Colorado Plateau faces a hidden struggle of sacrifice. I didn’t bike to protected places but rather, the forgotten ones. I didn’t map my route around national parks or wilderness areas but rather hubs of resistance and sacrifice zones. Under the iconic red rock, prospectors find tar sands, Issue N o 1 117
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Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

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