“Screedle on!” Someone shouts as we descend steep Navajo Sandstone slickrock. This is our third expedition as a group and we are each carrying twelve days worth of tightly packed gear on our backs. We appear to be defying gravity as we round a cliffside for our first glimpse of the Dirty Devil River far

I first meet Randy Ramsley on a clear morning in Utah, the kind where I want to stand half in sun and half in shade. My classmates and I have been bouncing along dirt roads for days in the van we have christened Jedidiah Smith. The Wild Rockies Field Institute (WRFI) logo magnetized to Jedidiah’s

As the first gentle hue of daylight blends with the few stars left over from a chilly night, our fearless leader of the day opens their eyes. They stumble blindly into our outdoor kitchen, bring fresh water from a trickling seep to a boil and wake their sleepy classmates from an undisturbed slumber. Another day

Our first day of section two on the Colorado Plateau with the Wild Rockies Field Institute (WRFI), we hike five miles into Dark Canyon Wilderness, formerly part of the recently reduced Bears Ears National Monument. Prior to entering Dark Canyon Wilderness, my mind is foggy. Troubles of the past haunt my brain. Loss, uncertainty and

I recall learning about Wild Rockies Field Institute in my first class in college ever, I couldn’t resist testing myself and my limits; I needed something outside of a classroom. I spent many years attending Valley Forge Military Academy, where I spent nearly 10 months of the year exclusively with high school-aged boys. Later, I

In the distance are two small buttes that protrude from the gently curved ground covered in sagebrush and juniper. These are the Bears Ears. Driving up several days later, we stop in between them. Looking down from the buttes the landscape slopes into flat plains which seep out until the horizon is created against the

“Our place is part of what we are. Yet even a “place” has a kind of fluidity; it passes through space and time… A place will have been grasslands, then conifers, then beech and elm. It will have been half riverbed, it will have been scratched and plowed by ice. And then it will be

We met with Jerry Shue, a Moab-based landscape geographer before embarking on our first twelve-day trip into Horseshoe Canyon to get our first introduction to the natural and social processes that have shaped the Colorado Plateau. He projected an image of a mesa composed of Navajo Sandstone on a small screen in a dark auditorium