Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

Layers Exposed
Brooke Larsen
to pieces rose beside the scraped earth. So
far, U.S. Oil Sands has failed to prove the
economic viability of the mine. As I biked
past, I raised my middle finger, a pathetic
expression of my rage.
For eight years, resisters, agitators, land and
water protectors have engaged in direct
action and camp outs, protesting the mine
and raising awareness. Last year organizers
held an action camp at the mine, reclaiming
land with seed bombs and large banners.
Twenty people were arrested. This year
friends gathered to reconnect with the place
and one another, not engaging in direct
action but rather writing, singing, and sharing
meals together.
Kate Savage, my friend and co-organizer
of Wasatch Rising Tide in Salt Lake City,
disagrees with the State’s claim that P.R.
Spring is of low scenic value. Kate helped
organize the action camp at the mine last
year, but has known about the Book Cliffs
since she was five-years-old. Her conservative
father had a “Save the Book Cliffs” sticker on
his Mormon Bishop’s binder. He was not an
environmentalist, but a hunter who loved
the place.
During our recent visit to the Tavaputs
Plateau, Kate and I rode in the back of an
old pick-up truck to see nearby petroglyphs.
After negotiating with cows who wouldn’t
leave the small unpaved road, I asked Kate
what the area meant to her. She responded,
“This isn’t Arches or the Uinta Mountains.
But just look how special it is—these aspen
groves, and Douglas fir trees, and the cliff
structures. The wildlife is off the charts. We
saw forty elk yesterday.”
In the high desert, only the most aesthetic
earns protection, and often not even that if
profitable minerals lay in the ground. The
standard of aesthetics is not only employed
by industry or land agencies, but also
conservationists. The federal government
traded the land that the tar sands mine rests
on, and much of the fracking fields in the
Uintah Basin that I biked through, after the
designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument. The protection of Grand
Staircase kept millions of tons of coal in the
ground in one of the Colorado Plateau’s most
scenic areas, but at the expense of more
emissions elsewhere. Land protection rarely
factors parts per million, and for too long the
conservation movement advocated for the
protection of certain areas at the expense of
others, including our climate. Land exchanges
don’t include the cost of climate chaos. How
do we price our future?
Kate came to the climate movement
reluctantly. “I was into protecting land and
living differently,” she said. “Climate seemed
so abstract to me. I was like, ‘how can you
care about parts per million, you can only
care about land, right?’ I had to go through
social justice movements to get to climate.
It came full circle with the Keep it in the
Ground movement, because it was about
land defense, which is originally where my
heart was.”
The vastness and stark beauty of the
Colorado Plateau easily invites protectors.
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