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Moab 2058
Model and mentor on living in this brave, new world
Remember when, not so very long ago, Moab was treated as a commodity? When this redrock landscape was valued as a resource - for minerals, for oil, and for luring hordes of tourists with open pocketbooks - rather than as a home? Remember when we were the World's Playground, the Uranium Capital of the World, and a key region in our country's quest for "energy independence?" Do you remember when the nourishment of our own community, of its human and non-human inhabitants, was secondary to the amount for which the community's constituent elements could be sold? When we were everything to everyone . . . but saved nothing for ourselves?
Remember when we - in Moab and across the country - actually had to fight to protect that which sustains us?
We've made major progress during the last 50 years - thank goodness - though, in some respects, this evolution was imperative to our survival. It's unlikely we could have endured The Big Shift without a concurrent paradigm shift.
As with many other communities the world over, it was a confluence of global events that catalyzed Moab's process of change. Isolated as we are, we are not independent of the forces that affect the world at large. However, it was our community's innovation and cohesion that propelled us beyond mere obligatory adjustments to become a world leader in sustainability solutions.
Who would have thought that big business would eventually look to the back of beyond for answers on how to respond to a changing world? Who would have thought that this voice in the wilderness would echo across continents?
Remember when Moab was an off-roader's mecca, when Jeeps and ATVs would pour in by the thousands for events like Jeep Safari? Do you remember how the county government supported it as essential to our economy, and the land management agencies considered motorized access a priority in their resource decisions? Remember when thousands of miles of dirt roads crisscrossed the landscape? It would be hard to imagine now except for the scars that remain on the soil, slowly healing over after decades rest.
Do you remember when everyone drove thousands of miles to reach Moab, towing their toys behind them?
And do you remember when all the agricultural lands south of town in Spanish Valley began disappearing under condos, when the proliferation of vacation properties for visitors squeezed out affordable housing for locals? Remember when all the orchards were razed as well, and land was more valuable as real estate than as a garden or farm? When local food production was more of a hobby than a necessity?
Remember the tailings pile, the residue of an era of fear and war?
And what about that bygone era of unsustainable energy development and use, when we powered our homes by burning coal and damming rivers, and enabled transportation by carving up the landscape and sending carbon into the atmosphere? I can still remember camping on the mesas around Moab, flares on the horizon betraying the presence of oil rigs in the darkness. And I remember my conflicted complicity in that environmental impact, driving the truck to enable those backcountry retreats.
Moab in the year 2058 is a vastly different place. But we didn't come to this new understanding of the world - and our place in it - overnight.
With rising oil prices, a shaky economy, and an unmistakable need to reverse the trends of climate change, tourism took a nosedive here beginning in 2010. Many of us in Moab suffered financially as so much of our local economy was based on the service industry. Food was a tricky issue as well; the costs of transporting it here became astronomical, and many people couldn't afford to stock their pantries. Few residents had gardens they could rely on. We asked for federal assistance, but so many larger towns were in the same boat. Moab was a low priority.
However, despite our personal troubles, this was also a time of good news for the landscape. As President Obama began his second term in office, he had the confidence to make sweeping environmental policy changes. Many of these were critical as the impacts of global warming became more concrete. The Bush-era resource management plans implemented by the BLM were revised during this time, taking the focus away from oil and gas development and motorized recreation and moving it back toward the Clinton-era vision of preservation. This was also when desert rats all over the Southwest rejoiced as Dave Foreman was unexpectedly named Secretary of Interior, the man who would make a priority of habitat restoration and continuity. Many of us Moabites ventured down to see his now famous acceptance speech at Glen Canyon Dam, where the plastic crack was unfurled down the face of the dam behind him - a replay of the past as a sign of things to come in the future.
As Moab struggled through the 2010s, innovation was born out of adversity. This was the birth of the era of community unity and support. Food and water resources became the focus of the ensuing decade. A local watershed council was established to protect the diminishing flows in Mill and Pack Creeks. Invasive species were finally eradicated to free up more water resources and restore habitat (and as a side note, we also figured out a way to use the tamarisk waste in earthbag construction - thus, no resources were squandered). Lawns were banned in town, and eventually a moratorium was instituted on building new residences as water allocation was deemed to be at sustainable limits. Fish actually reappeared in Mill Creek for the first time in decades.
A new focus on gardening and farming blossomed. Out in Spanish Valley, where most rental properties were abandoned with the combined slump in tourism and the mortgage crisis, many condos were converted into greenhouses. Others were leveled and returned to farmland. A local artist erected a sculpture from the condo wreckage as a monument to our previous ignorance. It still stands out in one of the fields south of town. Also, as an act of creative desert agriculture, cliffside gardens were planted in nearby canyons where shade and water seeps combine to form perfect growing conditions. A group of area rock-climbers banded together to tend these gardens, some of which suspend tomatoes and squash hundreds of feet off the canyon floor. This was the first of many initiatives to heal the psychological rift our culture once maintained between man and nature, civilization and wilderness. We understand dependence, unity and holism now, in a way the pre-Shift world never did.
We also narrowly avoided the crush of a third uranium boom with the tragic nuclear reactor meltdown in France in 2021. I know some locals were looking forward to the economic gains from extractive industry, but in retrospect, we benefitted from the end of area mining. In fact, this is when the new generation of miners developed, the ones who mine out abandoned buildings, cars and landfills to recycle materials. They're just as ruggedly independent as the miners of bygone eras, but their land ethic sets them apart as a new breed.
As we all know, by 2028, the world had largely descended into The Big Shift. Moab suffered, too, though we maintained our sense of humor and locally referred to the convergence of global economic depression and the climate crisis as "Gaia's Great Menopause." Despite our isolation - or perhaps because of it - we were better prepared to handle the catastrophe than most communities. We had already developed a resourcefulness that towns receiving government aid did not require. Food and water resources were secure. Earthbag building structures mitigated the need for heating and cooling in a time when electricity was intermittently available at best.
This became Moab's "womb time." With absolutely no one visiting our little desert town, we focused inward, we quietly innovated, we built relationships of cooperation and support. This is the time from which today's Moab - the one the world looks to not for recreation or minerals, but for answers - was finally born.
Though it was a time of fear, The Big Shift - with its wacky weather, lack of resources and infrastructure to handle the changing climate, and breakdown of the global economy post-oil - inspired a renaissance and shift in priorities across the globe. Moab was not alone in this, and we benefitted from the change in national environmental awareness.
Moab is surrounded by public lands, so changes in land management policy have enormous consequences for us. When the federal government panicked in 2030 and sold off massive chunks of public lands to pay off debts and fund necessary infrastructure updates, we were worried. Nearly the entire Colorado Plateau appeared to have moved to private ownership. However, we were overjoyed when we discovered who was behind the purchases. Much like the Rockefellers who bought up nearly all of Jackson Hole to facilitate the enlargement of Grand Teton National Park over 100 years ago, Ted Turner's son, Beau, had a plan for his newly acquired real estate. He deeded the land back to the Department of Interior with the stipulation that the land - most of it arid desert-scapes in the Southwest - would henceforth be managed as Turner National Monument. We in Moab are surrounded by his legacy of generosity and foresight.
Thanks to Beau Turner and the continued Foreman influence in the Department of Interior, wildlife is better able to adapt to the effects of climate change. Habitat and migration corridors have been restored. In 2032, we celebrated the return of grizzlies and wolves to the La Sal Mountains, both having migrated from the nearby San Juans. Had this occurred just a decade or two earlier, the predators would have been summarily shot, but Moab's acceptance of the returned mega-fauna signaled a shift in our relationship to the environment. The preservation of land, wildlife and vegetation became the status quo at this time. With the disappearance of off-road vehicles, oil and gas drilling, and corporate mining and logging, the landscape was no longer seen in terms of resources and economic gain. We finally began to see it as our life-support system and our home. We finally realized our connection to place, how our health is directly related to the health of the land, and how we need wilderness for our physical, mental and spiritual well-being. And when I say wilderness, I don't mean it in the antiquated sense of The Wilderness Act that was passed nearly 100 years ago. Since the '30s, the idea of federally designated wilderness has become quaint. There is simply no need to protect the land from our own actions. No, when I say "wilderness," I mean terrain that is largely left to its own devices, land with which we cooperate but do not dominate. This, perhaps, is the most significant revision in national opinion resulting from The Big Shift. And it makes memories of pre-Shift Moab more appalling and inconceivable.
The late '20s and early '30s also inspired a change in energy policy. Thanks to the Big Shift-inspired reestablishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the massive-scale solar- and wind-power facilities we rely upon today were installed across the Western landscape. However, due to Moab's size - and despite the fact that many of the federal solar plants are nearby - we were among the last to be connected to the new grid. Again, this bred unprecedented innovation in our tiny valley.
In a strange melding of Old West and New, pack animals were used to transport the latest in solar and hydropower technology from larger towns to Moab. All homes were outfitted with solar film on the roof. Small hydroelectric turbines were installed in the culinary water system. Helical turbines were placed in the free-flowing Colorado River. And a catenary solar power plant was built on the old Atlas tailings pile site (which was finally cleared away by the electrified rail-spur into town just before The Big Shift in 2027). With all this, we became the first town in the nation to go energy positive in 2040.
There are other ways that Moab became an amalgam of Old and New West sensibilities. The CCC camps nearby harkened back to their presence a century earlier, but this time, instead of building roads, they worked to rehabilitate old Jeep tracks. Many people in town relied upon horses to get around and to haul materials, thus leading to a cowboy renaissance. The outlaw returned, too, with a particular fondness for the few rich tourists returning to Moab via the rail-spur. And the Navajo, Hopi and Ute tribes in the area experienced a rebirth and renewed cohesiveness. With the dominant American culture staggering during The Big Shift, these cultures were able to renew their commitment to their traditions, reviving their nearly extinct land-based knowledge and heritage. In fact, the Navajo had much to teach other Moabites about living off the land, in harmony with the surroundings. For this, we are eternally indebted to our neighbors.
It wasn't until the '40s that tourism returned in any tangible way to our community, and even at that, it was a slow trickle compared to turn-of-the-century levels. With the completion of the solar electric National Railway System that took the place of the Interstate network, it became easier for people to make it to Moab. Adventure guiding services - for river trips, horse-packing adventures, and self-supported bike rides - were revived. Small shops downtown opened, catering to visitors and locals alike. Locally handcrafted items were sold, including prickly pear jam, handmade clothing fashioned from recycled textiles, and artwork. In fact, it was during Moab's "womb time" that our internationally renowned art scene developed.
It is our goal to this day not to seek out visitors - in no way do we desire to go back to our service industry days - but to welcome those intrepid enough to find our little town and teach them the true meaning of "community." Actually, if I had to define the Moab of the 2050s, I'd say that we're a community of teachers - instructors on the "good life." And you don't even have to come here to get a taste of it.
By 2052, over one-third of our population was making a living as consultants on sustainable living. Just a few years ago, a federally funded research facility on sustainability and community issues opened in town. Moab has become model and mentor on living in this brave, new world. Who would have thought it possible of the World's Playground or the Uranium Capital of the World?
Remember when Moab was a vastly different place, before we learned to respect that which supports us, before we learned that true wealth is found in a cohesive community and an uncorrupted landscape? Do you remember? Not many of us do anymore. And perhaps it's all for the best.
Jen Jackson is nearly 80 years old and a 56-year resident of southern Utah. She thanks Laurel Hagen and Franklin Seal for their vision regarding Moab - past, present and future.
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