I wrote an article in November about my efforts to prepare for winter. Now my preparations have run up against the juggernaut of winter weather reality.
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Utah has had a surfeit of eco-news in the past couple of weeks. First, of course, there’s Tim DeChristopher, the “bogus BLM bidder.” DeChristopher put his paddle up on December 19th to disrupt a BLM sale of mineral rights in Utah. He is now awaiting charges from the BLM, which seems completely flummoxed. They are purportedly not planning on holding another auction. [more]

A few things make this story timely. First, I just filled my gas tank for $1.33/gallon. Also, Flying J, the big truck stop chain I once worked for and from whom I bought my fuel while I was driving over the road, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, Dec. 22. [more]

The BLM’s auction of mineral and oil leases in Salt Lake City took a turn for the weird last week, beginning with Utah’s best loved/most reviled celebrity, ole Bob Redford’s endorsement of a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Earthjustice to halt the sale. [more]

“I’m not going to bombard you with graphs and statistics, which don’t make much of an impression on intelligent people anyway.”
--Edward Abbey, One Life at a Time, Please, pp14

“In 1984 the Bureau of Land Management…confessed that 31 percent of the land it administered was in ‘good condition’ and 60 percent in ‘poor condition.’ And it reported that only 18 percent of the rangelands were improving, while 68 percent were ‘stable’ and 14 percent were getting worse.”
--Edward Abbey, One Life at a Time, Please, pp15

A father of five and a supposed anarchist who admired Thoreau’s dictum, “That government is best which governs not at all,” an implacable enemy of the “Anthill State” which was a “technocratic despotism…the enemy of personal liberty, family independence, and community sovereignty,” Abbey was also an advocate for state-imposed birth control. [more]

Under pressure from environmental groups, Utah’s BLM dropped another 80,000 acres near Fillmore and Fishlake National Forest from next weeks sale of oil and gas leases, according to articles in the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News.
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Back in 2004, Haley Owen Hooper was pulled over by Sevier County deputies looking for the owner of the car she was driving. She says they searched the car without her permission. When she refused to perform a field sobriety test, they took her into custody.

“They arrested me for nothing,” said Hooper, “…I mean, they weren’t even looking for me.”

A female nurse at the Sevier County jail strip searched Hooper. When she refused to provide a urine sample, deputies obtained a warrant for bodily fluids. She offered to give blood but was told by one of the deputies, “in a black cowboy hat,” according to her, that the judge wanted urine. Next step: a male guard stripped her in front of several other male guards. She was held down and a catheter was forced into her.
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The Utah BLM appears to be going forward with the Dec. 19 sale of oil and gas leases, some of them in the vicinity of national parks, despite objections from environmentalist groups and at least nine Democratic senators.
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Contributions for and against California’s Proposition 8 reached $75.2 million, making it possibly the “costliest state ballot measure ever,” according to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune. And all the numbers aren’t in yet. [more]

Winter, to me, means skiing or at least memories of skiing, sledding and four-wheeling in southern Utah, when I seem to have most of the wilderness to myself. But I tell my wife, “Winter is death.” [more]