Broads Read ZOOM Book Group a Pandemic Success

Timely books and passionate readers were a great combination for the beginning of the Greater Wasatch Broadband Broads Read Book Group.

The idea for the group was the brainchild of Broadband co-leader Di Allison who asked Amy Brunvard to lead our discussions. You couldn't ask for a better leader. Amy is an academic librarian at the University of Utah Marriott Library and a rabid reader. Early on we decided to keep our book selections confined to environmental topics. 

Amy said it best, "Even though COVID has given me a chronic case of Zoom fatigue, I still eagerly  look forward to our Broads Read book discussions. It has been a delight to connect with a group of people who want to read and discuss the same kind of books I love about wilderness, women and the great outdoors.  One thing we've noticed is, Great Old Broads are practically the target audience for books published by the Utah-based Torrey House Press (and BTW, they offer a 20% discount for members https://www.greatoldbroads.org/member-discounts/).  During a time of social distancing, reading together has given me a real sense of  connection, not just to the community of Great Old Broads but to a wider community of people who care deeply about the natural world. "

Co-leader Janifer Larson spoke about one of the books. "Stoney Mesa Saga was an easy read. For those of us that know the history, it was great to place the characters to real the life individuals and places. 

We are reading Windswept right now and Di wanted to share one of her favorite pages from the book she identified with, “Virginia Woolf believed women needed a room of their own. Mary Sarton believed they needed time of their own. Me? I think women need a route of their own. Outdoors.”

We are currently reading Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women. Annabel Abbs. Torrey House Books, 2021, and will be discussing it on December 9. Jan Larson has started the book and had this to say, "I haven’t been an avid reader for years but since we started our GOB Book Read I’m back into it. Walking the trails each morning with the same group and their woofers brings a great uplift to my day. No matter how many times you walk the same path you always see something different things. The women in this book help inspire me to keep moving."

Please join us on December 9. A Zoom invite will be posted soon.

 For reference, here's the list of what we've read so far:

• Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness. Amy Irvine. Torrey House Press, 2018.
• Vesper Flights. Helen Macdonald. Grove Press, 2020.
• American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West. Betsey Gaines Quammen. Torrey House Press, 2020.
• Processed Meats: Essays on Food Flesh and Navigating Disaster. Torrey House Press, 2021.
• Stony Mesa Sagas. Chip Ward. Torrey House Press, 2017.
• Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Suzanne Simard. Knopf, 2021

    

Carol Takes a Hike

Carol Takes a Hike

It was July 1978 as Carol hiked with her first born son Scott to Iceberg Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana. Three weeks later she gave birth to her second son Jeff. What a woman! Great entry for the Broads View photo contest.

Thank you so much for this Broadsview Challenge!

It’s 21 degrees this November morning, but now it’s a habit! My partners, Jim the husband and Doug the dog, join me as we climb the Sky Steps in Durango. I don’t know how many times we climbed up and down this summer and fall, but thanks to the BroadsView challenge, we are doing it! And we are all getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

Nearly every weekend this summer and fall we went for long hikes, enjoying the vast beauty of Southwestern Colorado and a tad bit of Utah. Here are some of the trips my partners and I have taken this summer and fall:

• Pine River Trail
• Emerald Creek Trail
• Cascade Creek (3 times)
• Ice Lake (twice)
• Goody’s Rest (Colorado Trail)
• Little Molas Lake (Colorado Trail)
• Highland Mary
• Missionary Ridge
• Archer National Park
• Canyonlands National Park (both entrances)
• Canyon of the Ancients (twice)
• Upper Hermosa Creek with Broads for Cattle Grazing Monitoring. (That was the day we got lost coming back to the car.)

The high elevations amazed us- and I was surprised we had the stamina to climb so high (12,000+ feet). Let me share these pics with you. The one at Arches National Park was taken on the last day of the BroadsView Challenge, October 17. It is apropos that we found ourselves in Utah on the day this challenge ended.

The End is Only a New Beginning

October 17 Ends the 2020 Broads View Hiking Challenge

Sad the challenge it over. Melancholy as the days grow darker. Challenged by the day to day changes COVID 19 has brought to our lives. Excited for the coming of the winter hiking season and looking ahead to next year!

The summer hiking season has come to an abrupt halt. As I write this the outside temperature on October 26 is 14 degrees at 8:00 am in Ogden, Utah. Wow, time to get out the wool hat and gloves. 

For me, the hiking challenge offered an opportunity to set a goal and work to achieve it. I wanted to discover locations ignored by me in the past and at the same time slow my pace, look around and listen. Summer on the trails exceeded my expectations in many ways. I didn't reach huge summits or go extreme distances but that was okay. A sprained ankle in September required revisiting my final month of the challenge and that turned out to be a good thing!

I picked up trash on the trails along with dog poop left behind by un-informed hikers. I wrote thank you notes to public land managers and local trails organizations, and I donated money. My efforts reinforced how important these outdoor spaces are to my day-to-day life and the lives of my family and friends. 

I ended my challenge on October 17 at Winter's Grove Nature Trails in the Ogden Valley on the east side of Pineview Lake. The Greater Wasatch Broadband of Great Old Broads for Wilderness adopted this USFS trail last fall and have since fallen in love with its charm. 

Bright blue sky greeted Jan Larson (my Broadband co-leader) and I as we wandered along the path that bridges Hawkins Creek and then the north fork of the Ogden River. The towering cottonwood trees, willows and ash were showing off their multiple shades of yellow and orange as we wandered along the trail enjoying the spender this outdoor cathedral was offering. Soon they will be stripped of their leaves in preparation for another winter season. And that makes me happy. After all, the end is only a new beginning. Can't wait!  Barbara

Goals Provide Inspiration

DREAM BIG

"You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream," said novelist C.S. Lewis. I like that advice! Bruce Lee also said a goal is something to aim for, and I like that too. For me, setting a goal helps with my motivation and this year more than any other I needed that extra push.

As we near October 17 and the end of our Broads View hiking challenge, I'm reflecting on what I achieved and learned over the course of the summer. I learned that no matter where I hiked/biked I discovered something new. It didn't matter if it was on familiar ground or a brand new destination. I focused on slowing down and becoming a better listener. 

I listened to the sounds of nature, hearing for the first times the soft snap of cottonwood leaves as they left their home high in the trees and made their annual pilgrimage to the ground below. I volunteered on a trail project and discovered new friends who share my concerns for public lands. I traveled to new trails near my home that I never took the time to explore and found them to be delightful and worth a return trip. I wrote to trail organizations and thanked them for their efforts and I donated money to their cause.

On the second Saturday of October I will celebrate the summer of 2020, not on the summit of a favorite peak as I initially intended (since I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago and won't be ready to go far), but somewhere in the great outdoors, in a wild place and on public land. I am so grateful for the many individuals and organizations who are fighting to keep these lands in public hands and am happy to be part of that mission. Thank you Great Old Broads for Wilderness for all your hard work and dedication.

Michelle Obama said, "The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them." Let's all keep DREAMING BIG!

Checking Out a New Wilderness Area - Muddy Creek

 Utah’s New Muddy Creek Wilderness

Amy Brunvard

I want to give a shout out to the many, many activists who take time to write letters, call Congress, attend protests,  send money and do all the other work it takes to protect public lands wilderness.  Because of all that hard work, the Dingell Natural Resources Act of 2019  included the  Emery County Land Bill which, among other things,  added 663,000 acres in Utah’s San Rafael Swell to the National Wilderness Preservation System.  

This particular wilderness victory feels especially personal to me because the newly designated Muddy Creek Wilderness Area is one of my favorite places.  Muddy Creek lives up to its name. When my kids were little I used to sit all day by the creek while they gleefully coated themselves with the Greatest Mud on Earth. 

In the past, nearly every time I went to Muddy Creek, I’d encounter motor vehicles stuck in the mud.  For many years, Emery County put  Muddy Creek on maps as a jeep road encouraging vehicles to drive down the creek bed through the water and mud.   Muddy Creek became a poster-child for inappropriate RS2477 road claims (i.e.  a state-owned “highway” right of way crossing federal land). The misleading maps waylaid people who thought they could drive in a loop from Goblin Valley through the Swell.  They were chagrined to find out they’d have to backtrack 30 miles since the last five miles of “road” were usually wet and impassible.  Now that Muddy Creek is an official Wilderness Area, stuck jeeps shouldn’t be a problem any more. 

In order to celebrate Muddy Creek’s new Wilderness status, I went backpacking there  with another wilderness-loving friend and our teenagers.  From our camp, we did a day hike up to “The Chute” where the canyon narrows between dramatically high rock walls. This is the sweet spot of Muddy Creek, the place that all the guidebooks show in photos. The creek was hopping with little brown frogs, but the canyon was so quiet you could hear the whoosh of air under ravens’ wings.

Amy

Hiking Challenge - A Memorable Backpack by Di Allison

 Newbies from Texas Take a Backpack Trip

Will and I had arrived in Utah from flat land Texas the month before for his internship at U of U medical center and a medical student working with him asked if he wanted to backpack into the Uintah Primitive Area one long weekend. So we did. 

We rented packs from a sporting goods store in SLC, bought kapok filled sleeping bags with pictures of pine trees and deer on the material as well as a heavy pup tent with wooden poles. We loaded them and more up in our apartment, put the packs on, but I couldn’t stand up with mine on. I was 25 and buff! Will got ropes, white tube socks and big Kotex pads he stuffed in each tube sock and hitched me up with the contraption going over my head to pull forward with. Also we needed to create padding against the front of my body where the pack straps dug in. 

The next day we met up with the young med school couple whose pack set up looked considerably different than ours. About five hours into the hike toward our supposedly beautiful camping area beside a mountain lake in the Uintahs...I cried “uncle” and begged to be left under a large tree on the rock I and my pack had collapsed onto. My pleas of “I’ll be fine, just leave me alone!” went unheeded and I don’t remember the winning argument, but we all set off together once again. The area where we stopped was, indeed, beautiful with a lake nestled at the base of higher peaks. I remember Will caught a couple of small trout we cooked for dinner and a hike without packs the next day. 

My overall memory of it was positive, but I didn’t backpack again until 25 years later.  Maybe  the muscle memory was too pervasive. Then at my first Broads Board member meeting I attended as a new Board member Rose asked us to recall our first back packing trip and mine slowly emerged to the surface. Rose cracked up laughing and I remembered then that I had an ancient photo somewhere to prove it. Several years later I came across it and have meant to send it to her ever since. By the way, those are our heavy sleeping bags you can see across our shoulders and, of course, no comfy pads under them. Whatever!