Deseret Magazine - June 2022

MAG AZINE

MAG AZINE

FINDING OUR

MAG AZINE

ROOTS

WHY RURAL AMERICA

MATTERS BACKROADS

2022 THE 10 BEST DINERS

IN THE WEST

CODE RED

IS IT TOO LATE TO FIX HEALTH CARE?

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CONTENTS

38

56

APA’S RETURN THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST CELEBRATED MOUNTAINEERS.

WHERE DINING MAKES MEMORIES

by spenser heaps

TEN ICONIC PIT STOPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S ROAD TRIPS. by deseret staff

48 ROUGHING IT, DELUXE TED TURNER’S NEW MEXICO RANCH AND THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN WEST. by stephen fried

O N THE COVER: I L LUSTRATION BY G R EG NEWBOLD

66 FINDING OUR ROOTS RECKONING WITH THE HOLLOWING OUT OF RURAL AMERICA. by grace olmstead

JUNE 2022

7

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CONTENTS

MAGAZINE

“The excess spending on health care puts the United States at an economic disadvantage in world markets.”

COMMENTARY

ALL THAT IS

21

Dedicating ourselves to the work of connection. by tim shriver

IDEAS

CODE RED

80

America’s health care system needs a long-term cure. by david muhlestein and michael leavitt

THE WEST

THE FATE OF OLD FAITHFUL

34

One of America’s evocative wonders may be running out of steam. by benoît morenne

MODERN FAMILY

ZEN AND THE ART OF FATHERHOOD MAINTENANCE

22

Learning to be the father my child needs. by mike mooney

CULTURE NATIONAL AFFAIRS

INFLATION’S POLITICAL COST

DUST IN THE PAGES 28

How a bookstore in the desert helped shaped Western literature. by heather hansman

When prices surge, our politics change.

THE LAST WORD

by desmond lachman and chris stirewalt

(UKRANIAN) REFUGEES WELCOME

74

THE DIGITAL FIX 30

84

Rebooting the web to mend a divided society. by lois m . collins

Could a response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis be a paradigm shift? by benoît morenne

JUNE 2022

9

THE BUZZ

OUR READERS RESPOND

which featured Deseret Magazine’s first annual “State of Faith” report, received national attention with coverage from the Christian Post, Fox News, The Federalist and The Hill. The issue included a national poll conducted by Marist, that found that although religious institutions are in decline, religion continues to play a powerful and unifying role. (“The State of Faith”) “The vast majority of Americans still believe in a higher power, and a majority believe in the biblical God,” Kelsey Dallas explained. Daniel Cox, founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, tweeted: “Important new findings and insights from lots of thoughtful folks.” Bob Smietana, a national religion reporter for Religion News Service, tweeted: “Great piece by Kelsey Dallas on the state of faith in the U.S. and the importance of organized religion.” The poll was also praised by Natalie Jackson, director of research at Public Religion Research Institute, during the Religion News Association’s March conference, saying that more organizations should produce their own research. Jennifer Graham and Kelsey Dallas also profiled 20 of America’s most prominent faith leaders in the April issue. (“The New Reformers”) Those included don’t all agree with one another, and as the authors put it, that’s the point. “What they do hold in common is a passion for the kind of discourse that elevates moral conviction Staff writer Ethan over political party, that prizes principle over partnership,” reader Kevin Labrum wrote in response.

Bauer traveled to Cuba, the island his family fled more than 50 years ago, seeking answers about faith, freedom and the enduring power of ancestral legacies. (“The House That Exile Built”) Norman Lewis, associate professor at the University of Florida Journalism School praised the article as “Truly a New Yorker-quality. You clearly left a lot on the cutting-room floor, choosing the most descriptive scenes, dialogue and anecdotes. That’s a hallmark of a superb writer.” Renowned journalist Anthony DePalma, who spent over two decades at The New York Times, praised the “wisdom” in Bauer traveling to Cuba, saying, “We all are better for it.” On Twitter, S.L. Price, a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, retweeted the article saying, “Though highly personal, it’s not really about the writer; it’s a rich disciplined snapshot of Cuba today.” Lois Collins wrote about parenting and the self-imposed fear of not doing enough. Resources for Infant Education suggests that we may be coddling our kids too much. (“How Parents Can Do (a Lot) Less and Enjoy Their Children More”) Former actress, educator and Resources for Infant Education associate Janet Lansbury retweeted the article calling it, “An accurate, unsnarky piece on RIE, imagine that!” Collins also interviewed the Rev. Andrew Teal, an Oxford scholar and Angelican priest (“A Healing Experience”) on how to support one another in hard times. Teal responded in an email, “Thank you for such a profound line And of questioning — I’m really honored to share those things with you — and discover them afresh at the same time.”

Barry C. Black, the 62nd chaplain of the U.S. Senate, provided a sermon on the power of faith in a divided world. (“Uniting a Divided World”) “Imagine the healing that could come to this nation,” Black writes, “if believers across the spectrum of denominations and religious traditions would humble themselves by admitting our culpability in our national division.”

TH E A P R I L I SS U E ,

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THE VIEW FROM HERE

THE PROMISED LAND

W

hen i was in the fourth grade, my family moved in with my grandparents. It was only for a few months, but it left an indelible impression on me. If I close my eyes, I can still see the dust rising above the round corral as my father and grandfather broke horses. I can smell the saddles in the musty tack room, the molasses on the grain. I can almost taste the wild licorice my grandpa would pick in the hayfields amid the morning dew.

Those memories came flooding back as I read this month’s cover story, Grace Olmstead’s elegy to growing up in rural Idaho (Finding Our Roots, page 56). Olmstead went to college in Virginia, then moved for work to Washington, D.C., where she grew accustomed to a sort of disdain toward the place she calls home.

And yet, as Olmstead points out, the rural interior — the vast plains that fill in the intellectual blanks from the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, over the Rockies and east to the Appalachians — is an essential part of America today. “It’s easy to exploit places we don’t know, places we believe to be unimportant,” Olmstead writes. “It’s easy to think the soil can last forever if you know nothing of it.” Less than 2 percent of Americans work on a farm; very few of us have a direct link to the land and those who work it.

This issue is dedicated to that side of the West that’s often overlooked, showcasing the kinds of places you can only find if you get off the interstate and onto the back roads. Summer marks travel season for

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many of us, with long road trips and family reunions, so we’re highlighting the most legendary diners in the region of Deseret, from Route 66 in Arizona, to Highway 50 in Nevada, the Loneliest Road in America (Where Dining Makes Memories, page 66). My mouth watered as I read it, and I’m hoping yours does, too.

And what would a travel issue be without trips to places most of us will never go? Spenser Heaps, a Deseret News photographer, takes us on a journey to the Himalaya with one of the world’s most legendary mountaineers (Apa’s Return, page 38). Acclaimed author Stephen Fried retraces the path of early 20th-century writers who helped define the American myth of the West with a trip to Ted Turner’s New Mexico ranch, bringing that East Coast wonder to the rugged beauty of the region we call home (Roughing It, Deluxe, page 48).

Like Olmstead, I too have left a small town to live and work in a city.

I’ve daydreamed about moving back, though it never seems to be the right time. Instead, it’s a place where I visit during summers and holidays, a place where my children are developing their own indelible memories — like the acrid smell of buckshot after you shoot a clay pigeon, or the fresh musk of sagebrush just after an afternoon rainstorm. Deep down, I hope that they’re also gaining an appreciation for the land itself, and for the men and women who work it to bring the rest of us so much of what we depend on, and often take for granted.

— JESSE HYDE, EDITOR

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CONTRIBUTORS

GRACE OLMSTEAD

MICHAEL LEAVITT

DESMOND LACHMAN

STEPHEN FRIED

A journalist and native of rural Idaho, Olmstead’s work has been featured in The American Conservative, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her book, “Uprooted,” explores the ramifications of leaving small-town America behind and what we might owe those communities. An excerpt can be found on page 66.

After serving as Utah’s 14th governor from 1993 to 2003, Leavitt joined the Bush administration as administrator of the EPA and then secretary of Health and Human Services. He is the founder of Leavitt Partners, a health care consulting firm. On page 80, he and David Muhlestein, a researcher and consultant, write about the urgency of rebuilding America’s health care system.

Lachman is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

He was previously a managing director at Salomon Smith Barney and deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s Policy Development and Review Department. He and Chris Stirewalt, also a senior fellow, explore what Ronald Reagan got right about addressing inflation in an election year on page 28.

A New York Times bestselling author and award-winning investigative journalist, Fried’s books include “Rush,” “Appetite for America” and “Thing of Beauty.” He teaches at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, GQ and Rolling Stone. He takes us to Ted Turner’s ranch to experience the myth of the American West on page 48.

TIMOTHY SHRIVER

MICHAEL J. MOONEY

GREG NEWBOLD

HEATHER HANSMAN

Shriver is chairman of Special Olympics International and author of The New York Times bestseller “Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most.” He is also co-founder and chairman of UNITE — an initiative promoting national unity and solidarity across differences. His commentary on overcoming hostility is on page 21.

Mooney is a New York Times bestselling author. He writes for ESPN, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, GQ and Popular Mechanics. His work has appeared in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Crime Reporting. His artful essay on the birth of his first child can be found on page 22.

An award-winning illustrator, Newbold was mentored by illustrators such as C.F. Payne, Gary Kelley and Murray Tinkelman.

His clients have included Random House, The Wall Street Journal, American Express and Simon & Schuster. His illustrations accompany Grace Olmstead’s story on page 66.

Hansman is an award-winning journalist who covers the intersection of science, adventure and culture. She has contributed to The New York Times, Scientific American and The Guardian.

She explores the rich history of western literature from the shelves of a local bookstore on page 74.

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It will get brighter.

OPTIMISM

COMMENTARY

ALL THAT IS DEDICATING OURSELVES TO THE WORK OF CONNECTION

BY TI MOTH Y S H R I V E R

D

ecades ago Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker wrote these words that have stayed with me through the years: “No one is exempt from the possibility of a conscious connection to All That Is. Not the poor. Not the suffering. Not the writer sitting in the open field.”

We’re at a moment in history when many Americans doubt Walker’s confidence in human possibility. Americans on all sides of our divides question the dignity of those on the “other” side and even rail against the possibility that they are worth the effort. Opinion polls suggest a majority of us believe that we can overcome our hostility to one another, but a majority also believe that there are some who are just too far gone.

I hear this all the time: “Those people are hopeless. I can’t have anything to do with them.” The labels flow: They’re “contemptible,” “disgusting,” “racist,” “socialist,” “godless,” “hateful” or all of the above. With this way of seeing, those on the “other” side are exempt from “the possibility of a conscious connection to All That Is.” They’re too far gone.

I side with Alice Walker. I don’t think everyone has a conscious connection to all that is, but I do agree with her that no one is exempt from the possibility. I think the majority of us are struggling and feeling unfairly judged by the “other side.” I think the hostility that we levy against others is often hiding the pain and hunger within ourselves. I think the wounds of injustice left unchanged for generations have intensified righteous anger. But when anger becomes hatred, divisions intensify and the threats become more virulent.

Things are not as they should be — on that we can all agree. But what’s driving our search for a more just and joyful future can’t be revenge; it has to be our shared search for connection. It’s all about connection. It’s connection that we hunger to have but which we are unwittingly damaging over and over again. And it’s connection to a purpose larger than ourselves that will ultimately help us create a new spirit of us. Contempt is exactly the wrong way to find it.

Whatever your politics, I hope and believe we can dedicate ourselves to the work of connection — not just a connection to the people we like, the ideas we were raised with or the ideology we claim to be our own. Not

just a connection to our team or our tribe, or to winning and defending our side. Instead, what about an effort to reach out across a divide and join with someone from the “other” side in the work of connection?

Some may find it in nature — I know I often do — simply by marveling at the miracle of a single leaf, the rounded bushy tail of a squirrel or the transcendent complexity of the human eye. Some may find it in prayer and worship, and there too, I often find an experience of “all that is” through the wondrous complexity of silence, the powerful longing of song, the companionship of prayer. I think of millions of moments I’ve experienced in my work with Special Olympics, when I’ve been in the presence of Special Olympics athletes who reminded me, with their raw and audacious goodness, that we are connected.

Is this politics? To be linked to all that is? You bet. In my view, the least important part of politics is party and elections, and the most important part is the bonds politics can form, the dreams it can inspire and the collective purpose it creates. The most urgently needed policy changes, in the end, will only happen if we, the people, are committed to each other and the possibility of fulfilling a purpose larger than any one person. All of this depends on a singular conviction: That everyone is capable of a connection to “All That Is” and the purpose of our politics is to make it possible for each of us to achieve it.

To follow Alice Walker, for me, is to be filled with hope in the moment of great changes we’re living right now. It’s true — many Americans are suffering deeply and many are suffering unjustly. And many are choosing contempt. But their pain should not obscure the hidden hope of something new emerging. We can join together — not as Democrats or Republicans, not as heartland or coastland, not as conservative or liberal — but as people capable of a conscious connection to each other and to all that is.

That’s what could change our politics. In fact, it may be the only thing that can.

T I M O T H Y S H R I V E R I S C H A I R M A N O F S P E C I A L O LY M P I C S I N T E R NAT I O NA L A N D FO U N D E R O F U N I T E , A N I N I T I AT I VE TO F U L F I L L T HE PROMISE OF AMERICA T H RO U G H STO RI E S, S O LU T I O NS A N D ST U D I E S T H AT B R IN G US CLOSER TOGETHER .

JUNE 2022

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MODERN FAMILY

ZEN AND THE ART OF FATHERHOOD MAINTENANCE A FATHERLESS FATHER WANTS TO LEARN HOW TO BE A GOOD DAD

BY MICHAEL J. MOONEY

M

y wife and I were standing in the kitchen of our home in Dallas, telling each other about our day like we had thousands of times before. It was a few weeks before Christmas and we already had some decorations up. I was by the sink. Tara was standing a few feet away by the door, her long hair still damp from her afternoon run. We can’t remember what we were saying when Tara suddenly switched subjects.

“Well,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

Quick, blunt, delivered with a smirk. Very much Tara’s style.

She showed me the test she’d taken a few minutes earlier and we both felt a shot of elation. We’d been together for nearly 15 years at that point. Tara’s more careful, more insightful, more disciplined. I’m more likely to crack a joke, more inclined to midday naps. Over the years, we’d had a variety of should-weshouldn’t-we conversations, ruminating on the pros and cons of parenthood. We weren’t trying to have a baby, but we weren’t trying not to have a baby, either.

Mixed with my joy, of course, was a twinge of fear. Well, more than a twinge. Not just because we were both north of 35 and we’d carefully built a life together that somehow felt like one long, never-boring adventure — but also as safe and comfortable as a warm blanket. The fear ran deeper: I’ve always hoped I’d be a good father, but I’ve also always worried I wouldn’t know how.

Like tens of millions of Americans, I was raised without a father. My mother tried 22

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her best to juggle work and parenting. She single-handedly played the roles of provider, protector, nurturer, coach, disciplinarian. She instilled lessons about fairness, decency, the value of learning. But no matter what she did, I’ve always known that my mother could never show me how to be a good father.

A lot of researchers have studied the effects a positive father figure can have in someone’s life. Studies from researchers at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins showed that with a good enough dad in the home, kids are

I KNEW I NEEDED TO LEARN HOW TO BECOME THE KIND OF FATHER I’D NEVER HAD. AND I DIDN’T HAVE LONG TO FIGURE IT OUT.

less likely to struggle with depression, anxiety and behavioral problems in general. A U.S. Department of Education study showed that children with “highly involved fathers” were 42 percent more likely to earn A grades and 33 percent less likely to be held back a year in school. When kids have close relationships with their fathers, they tend to have higher-paying jobs and healthier relationships as adults. Plenty of people have done well in life despite unhealthy relationships with their

fathers, but research from Princeton shows that, statistically speaking, growing up without a good dad means you’re also more likely to have addiction issues, commit crimes and spend time behind bars.

I’ve been luckier than most. I’ve managed to stay out of prison, get a few degrees, carve out a career as a professional writer — something I dreamed about as a kid. I also found an amazing partner to spend my life with. For me, not having a father has been more of an amorphous gravitational chasm situated somewhere on the horizon of nearly every experience.

Sometimes it’s just a subtle awkwardness: In elementary school, I dreaded annual events like “Donuts for Dads.” It’d be a sea of kids I saw every day, each suddenly standing next to a father — while I was all alone. I’d get quiet anytime the topic of fathers came up. I felt ashamed before I even knew what that word meant. And I’d sometimes catch myself staring whenever I saw boys playing catch with their fathers, even on TV. I’d just imagine how my life might be different if I had a dad around.

It also meant a deep, abiding fear that I might be lacking fundamental lessons on what it means to be a man. To this day, I’m self-conscious about a skill deficit I attribute to fatherlessness: I watch YouTube videos to remember how to tie a tie. I can’t fix anything that requires a solution more sophisticated than Drano or WD-40. I’ve changed a few tires and windshield wipers, but that’s it for working on cars.

There are more serious, more essential

ILLU STR ATION BY C H A DWI C K O M BU TO

JUNE 2022

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MODERN FAMILY

issues, too: self-discipline, confidence, courage. I worry that because I didn’t have a dad, I might not be capable of the kind of trust humans need to be happy, productive members of society.

A few weeks after the understated announcement in the kitchen, my wife and I were looking out a window into our backyard, preparing to open an email attachment from her doctor’s office. This is how we’d learn if we were having a boy or a girl. Some people forward the email to relatives or bakeries that do pink or blue cupcakes concealed with frosting, and the parents find out at big gender reveal parties — but that’s not us.

My wife opened the attachment on her phone: A boy!

We had a monumental hug — a moment that, looking back, feels like we were standing in a painting.

As we talked excitedly about our boy, about names we liked, about growing our family, we watched a flock of wintering cedar waxwings hovering around a tree. There were so many, each with smooth, shiny feathers, flecked with bits of yellow and red. The male waxwing, I’d learn later, stays with the female when she lays eggs. He brings her food, protects the nest. He feeds the chicks when they hatch and stays with them until they’re ready to leave the nest.

Looking at these beautiful, silky little birds and thinking about the tiny son growing inside my wife, I knew I needed to learn how to become the kind of father I’d never had.

And I didn’t have long to figure it out.

America, fathers weren’t expected to play a big role in a child’s development. Stick around, make some bad jokes and enough money to keep the lights on and food on the table. If you have a boy, maybe teach him how to shave or shoot a gun. If you have a girl, threaten any boy who came near her.

Now though, society expects men to be more involved. There’s an entire industry dedicated to helping men become good dads. The advice comes in a variety of forms — books, podcasts, YouTube videos — and a variety of outlooks and parenting styles. There’s a slight choose-your-own adventure feel.

One of the earliest books in the directed-at-dads genre was “The Expectant Father,”

by Armin Brott, known online as “Mr. Dad.” First published in 1995, the book focuses on the importance of spending meaningful time with pregnant partners, spending meaningful time with babies, balancing career and family,

F O R D E C A DE S IN

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and how much sex couples can have during pregnancy. Practical advice includes: Go to doctors appointments with the mom, think about how the mom might be feeling instead of getting upset at her, don’t be a jerk.

There’ve been five editions and a series of sequels covering fathering during baby’s first year and first 36 months. Each cover features a different color dad-plaid-tastic button-down shirt.

A generation later, there are dozens of books on the same shelf, ranging in sensibilities from across the cultural spectrum: Some focus on communication techniques. Some focus on physical strength and courage — on making Men with a capital M. Some are written

by clinical psychologists and acclaimed academics. Some are written by Navy SEALs or former pro athletes. Some are funny. Some are religious. Some are poetic. A disproportionately large percentage of them include cartoons and comic strips.

There are also a ridiculous number of podcasts for fathers. You could legitimately build a house brick by brick in the amount of time it would take to listen to even just the most popular made-for-dad’s-ears content out there.

Something for everyone: humor, brevity, fitness, pop culture.

YouTube is the same way, flush. There are dozens of channels dedicated to making videos for men who want to be better dads,

and they vary from gentle to militaristic to flatulence-centric. Some are framed like a free-with-ads online university. There are videos that demonstrate how to hold a baby, how to change a diaper, what to say when kids bring home bad grades.

Clearly there’s an appetite for this. Because a sizable cross-section of humanity is like me: Nervous and looking for guidance, scouring the modern world for clues about the type of men we didn’t have in our lives as children. I found at least a dozen TED Talks about different aspects and approaches to fatherhood.

The comment sections have become heartbreaking forums for confessionals from men and women of all ages, all yearning to make sense of the troubled — or nonexistent — relationships with their fathers.

In 2020, a Seattle man named Rob Kenney started a YouTube channel called Dad, How Do I? It’s just videos of Kenney showing the audience how to do basic maintenance work around the house. He fixes a running toilet.

He hangs a shelf. He changes a tire on his car.

He introduces every video with “Hey kids!” and shares an amazingly terrible dad joke, like: “Don’t trust atoms — they make up everything.” Sometimes he gives viewers general encouragement or says they’ve made him proud.

As I’m typing this, the channel has just under four million subscribers and nearly 20 million overall views.

The deeper I plunge into this dad-advice world, the clearer it becomes that society is deeply craving something. to learn the good-dad best practices, I also tried doing my own field research.

I made it a mission to ask nearly every father I encountered for advice on how to be a good dad. I started with friends and family. Some told me things that literally every human alive knows about being a new parent: “You won’t get a lot of sleep!” or “Your life’s about to change!” A few warned that our days of dashing around Europe or Asia were probably behind us now.

Not helpful.

A few advised patience and trust. A few suggested that some inner-caveman character would eventually take hold and guide me. A cousin told me that the fear I already had — the terrorized concern for this baby’s welfare and future — might dissipate a little, but it would never disappear. One friend from college told me that being a dad was “like watching your heart beat outside of your body.”

I N MY Q UE ST

Soon I was asking people I work with. An editor told me that being a father, especially when the teenage years start, means “constantly feeling like a failure.” A writer friend told me, with economic profundity: “Dads carry things.”

Sometimes I asked strangers. A friend of a friend I met at a birthday party told me to do my best to share whatever brings my kid joy.

An Uber driver told me that what I do in front of my kid — what I demonstrate — will be infinitely more important than what I say. A man I met on a business trip to Houston told me, “Just love your kids for whoever they are and not who you want them to be.”

I asked my father-in-law what he’d tell a younger version of himself if he had the chance. As far as fathers go, my wife has a pretty great one. I’ve always been impressed by how much he seems to care about doing right by his children, how involved he’s been in their lives. For what it’s worth: He can also build, fix or install virtually anything.

He’s also funny, so I expected him to turn the conversation into a joke. But he didn’t. He paused for a moment, then poured forth in a way he almost never does.

“When you have a kid, you just instantly fall in love,” he told me. “Whatever you do, if you do it out of love for them, that’s the best you can do.” Then he paused and added one thing: “It’s also important to listen to your kids,” he said. “Even when you’re busy with work or something else, take the time to stop and listen to them as much as you can.”

While I was doing my best to learn about fatherhood, my wife, the considerably more studious of the two of us, started buzzing through the canon of mainstream parenting books. She’d often summarize them for me and want to discuss them chapter by chapter.

We went over books like: “Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child.” “Brain Rules for Baby.” “Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids.” “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.”

A lot of the books mention the four basic types of parenting styles: permissive, authoritarian, neglectful, authoritative. (Research shows authoritative parenting is associated with more self-reliant, socially competent kids while the other three styles are more linked to mental health issues, substance abuse and low self-esteem.) My wife and I agreed that so much of the research and advice boils down to treating your child with the same love and respect you’d extend toward any meaningful

MY WIFE AND I AGREED THAT SO MUCH OF THE RESEARCH AND ADVICE BOILS DOWN TO TREATING YOUR CHILD WITH THE SAME LOVE AND RESPECT YOU’D EXTEND TOWARD ANY MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIP.

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relationship.

One of the big themes that comes up frequently in these books is the suggestion that parents work on healing their own emotional wounds and familial patterns of trauma or neglect.

That, of course, is easier said than done.

F O R MOST O F my life, whenever I thought about the concept of a good father, my mind inevitably wandered back to something I saw on TV when I was a kid. It was during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. A 26-yearold British sprinter named Derek Redmond, one of the fastest men in the world, was running in a 400-meter semifinal heat. He’d already won his first round and quarterfinal races in the same event.

A few seconds into this race, though, Redmond pulled up and fell to the ground, grabbing his right thigh and wincing in agony. Torn hamstring. Just like that: Olympic dreams dashed in front of the world. But then Redmond stood up. He began to hobble around the track, intent on finishing the race. Well after the other runners were done, as he writhed forward, the physical and emotional anguish apparent on his face, Redmond felt someone tap him on the shoulder. His father, Jim, had jumped out of the audience and fought past the security guards. Dressed like the consummate goofy dad — in tennis shoes, shorts and high socks — Jim put his arm around Derek and gently helped him across the finish line.

As a kid, the moment was seared into my consciousness, some epitome of what I thought about dads. A dad was there to fight away the people trying to take that sprinter off the track. A dad was there to protect his son, there to help carry him across the finish line.

After reading and watching and listening to as many explanations of positive parenting as possible, though, my perception of what constitutes a good father began to change. As I studied and researched, there were a few ideas about fatherhood I connected to most.

A good dad should be present, and not just physically. That often means putting down the phone, turning off the TV or computer. It means being affectionate, being mindful.

A good parent should let kids do things for themselves. That doesn’t mean leaving kids of all ages to their own devices. But there’s a strong temptation to solve a kid’s problems.

Children, however, develop infinitely more skills by figuring out how to solve problems themselves. As a parent, you’re there to coach

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and demonstrate.

Good parenting means modeling healthy relationships. A good dad is good to his child’s mother, regardless of whether they’re still together. Kids are watching, learning. They see how their parents treat people and they’ll take those lessons to heart.

Emotions are OK. Good parents name them. They encourage children to feel their emotions, but also demonstrate regulating those feelings. Nearly every parenting book eventually gets to the concept of empathy: Understand that there are reasons for your kid’s behavior, even when it’s frustrating.

Love your kids unconditionally. The world

I REALIZED IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PERFECT WINDSOR KNOT OR THE ABILITY TO REBUILD A CARBURETOR. IT’S ABOUT BEING THE GENTLE ARM AROUND THE BACK.

can be complicated, hard. Don’t base your affection or approval on anything other than the fact that they’re your kids. Love them no matter what they do, say or wear, no matter the mistakes they make.

There are a few practical tips that come up a lot, too. Read to your kids as often as possible. Apologize when you’ve made a mistake.

Praise effort over ability. Make kids feel safe, even when they want to test their boundaries.

THE PRE GNANCY WAS complicated. The birth was complicated, too. Tara was more courageous through it all than I ever thought possible. When we finally brought our son home from the hospital, I was more petrified than ever. As I watched him sleeping in the bassinet we had in our bedroom, he seemed so small and fragile, and the world seemed so dangerous.

But seeing his little baby smile felt better than any inebriant I’ve ever consumed. His laughter instantly became the greatest sound I’ve ever heard. This tiny creature, this perfect blend of my wife and me, was a living, breathing, absolutely adorable reminder of my own mortality — but also the closest thing this planet has to the possibility of life after death.

I learned early on that some of the advice I thought seemed unhelpful and obvious proved remarkably prescient. In those first weeks — or maybe months, it’s all a blur — I got even less sleep than I’d imagined. Our lives were, in fact, instantaneously and profoundly transformed. It’s like my capacity for emotion immediately expanded: higher highs, lower lows.

The world somehow became more beautiful and also more terrifying. There might not be anything I like more than watching him experience — well, anything. It is, indeed, like watching my heart beat outside of my body.

I try to keep in mind as much of the research and advice and tips as possible. My wife still reads parenting books and we still talk about them as often as we can. Every bit of parenting advice is different, and every bit is the same.

I started to accept that parenthood is some perpetual striving toward balance. Securing, but not over-sheltering. Setting firm boundaries, but with understanding and flexibility.

Acting out of love and hoping for the best. As much as we might want to, we can’t protect our children from all the pain in the world. We can’t protect our kids from every disappointment, from every illness — and those things actually make them stronger.

I suddenly had a new appreciation for that clip from the 1992 Olympics. That sprinter’s dad couldn’t protect his son from a torn hamstring. He couldn’t protect him from heartbreak on an international stage. All he could do was be there when his son needed someone.

That’s what a good dad does. I realized it’s not about the perfect Windsor knot or the ability to rebuild a carburetor. It’s about being the gentle arm around the back.

I’ve come to realize I was wrong about a few other things, too. Yes, mothers and fathers are different, but being a good dad really just means being a good parent. So in many ways, my mother did sort of show me how to be a good father. So has my father-in-law. I’m going to take his advice and listen. I’m going to take the other advice, too: I’ll do my best to be patient, to be trusting. I’ll do my best to accept that sometimes I’ll feel like a failure, and I’ll try to demonstrate — and not just talk about — the way I want my son to live. I’ll show my admiration and respect for Tara. And I’ll love my son for who he is, whoever he becomes.

At some point, I also realized the entire premise of my quest was wrong. I wanted to figure out how to be the father I wished I’d had growing up. But that’s changed. Now I want to be the father my son needs.

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YEARS 27

JUNE 2022

EST 2001

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INFLATION’S POLITICAL COST WHAT JOE BIDEN COULD LEARN FROM RONALD REAGAN IN AN ELECTION YEAR

BY D ESM OND L AC H M A N A N D C H R I S STI R E WA LT

J

ames carville, bill Clinton’s political adviser, famously said that when it comes to elections, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In the run-up to November’s midterms, President Joe Biden must hope that Carville’s adage is not always true.

Whether or not Biden is fully to blame for the economy’s sorry state, his party will face an electorate experiencing the country’s highest inflation rate in 40 years. It seems increasingly likely that we will have an economy on the cusp of a recession and a stock market on the back foot come Election Day. This does not bode well for Democrats retaining control of either house of Congress. This is especially the case considering polls show that voters consider inflation or the high cost of living to be among the most important issues facing the country.

Biden is not the first president to drag inflation woes into a midterm election, so there’s precedence for what likely lies ahead. Three other presidents have watched their parties take it in the chops in the midterms as Americans faced rapid price increases: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Here’s what the past can teach us about what may lie ahead for Biden and the Democrats.

There were a lot of reasons that in 1974 Republicans took the worst midterm beating of either party in nearly two decades. One, of course, was Ford’s September pardon of 28

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Richard Nixon. While the pardon was certainly no boost to the GOP’s short-term prospects, the party’s real problem was an average annual inflation rate of more than 11 percent.

The price shocks, which began with OPEC’s oil embargo a year earlier, long outlasted the oil crisis itself. Democrats gained 49 seats in the House and four in the Senate, numbers that would not be surpassed for 20 years.

THE KEY MISTAKE THAT BIDEN MADE WAS TO ENGAGE IN EXCESS BUDGET STIMULUS TOO SOON WITHOUT CONSIDERATION OF THE UPCOMING MIDTERMS.

As inflation persisted, so did the political misery for the party in power. In 1978, with average annual inflation at 7.62 percent, just below current rates, Carter watched Democrats give back 15 of the House seats they had won during Republicans’ inflationary pains.

Then, in 1982, with inflation clocking in at 6.16 percent, Reagan oversaw the punishing loss of 26 House seats for his party, including many that had flipped from blue to red as part of his overwhelming victory just two years earlier.

Reagan and his team, though, knew that such losses were likely, and probably necessary if their plan to break inflation’s hold on the economy was to work. The president had made inflation a major part of his campaign against Carter as Americans were getting crushed under rates that hit 15 percent in 1980.

After taking office the next year, Reagan backed Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker’s audacious bid to use massive interest rate hikes to finally break inflation. Volker rode interest rates to their all-time high of 22.36 percent in July 1981. The strategy worked but also devastated much of the economy as businesses were starved of capital and homebuyers fled the market. Reagan used the last of the mandate from his 1980 landslide election victory to push through the most significant tax cut in generations, including new inducements to capital investment.

As the economy slipped into an even deeper recession, Reagan could at least hope that the steps he’d taken would pay off later, despite the political pain that the 1982 midterms would bring. He was right. The recovery that followed propelled Reagan two years later to a reelection victory in which he carried 49 states. But there is nothing to suggest that Biden is following a similar approach or that he will obtain similar results. After belatedly acknowledging the issue, Biden’s priorities on inflation seem to be, first, shift blame to

others, and second, offer mostly symbolic balms while still pursuing deficit spending that exacerbates the underlying problem.

To be sure, Biden has had more than his share of bad economic luck, including the rise of the omicron variant of Covid-19 just as delta began to fade. Then there was another external economic shock in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led to an international oil price of over $100 a barrel, which has contributed to record-high gas prices in the U.S. At the same time, the Russian invasion has sent grain prices through the roof and substantially increased the price of key industrial metals like aluminum, nickel and palladium.

Closer to home, Biden had the misfortune of having a Federal Reserve asleep at the wheel during his first year in office. Throughout 2021, as inflation kept accelerating, the Fed appeared to convince itself that the surge was but a transitory phenomenon that would soon reverse once the pandemic abated. That caused the Fed to keep its interest rate at near zero and to fall behind the inflation curve. It also caused the Fed to turn a blind eye to the money supply’s acceleration to its fastest pace of growth in the past 50 years.

The Fed also seems to have done Biden no favors by creating equity, housing and credit market bubbles through its aggressive buying ILLU STR ATION BY J O N K R AU S E

of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Throughout most of last year, even at a time when the equity and housing markets were on fire, the Fed kept buying $120 billion in bonds a month, including $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities.

As a result, equity valuations reached nosebleed levels experienced only once in the past century. Meanwhile, even in inflation-adjusted terms, housing prices exceeded those in 2006 on the eve of the housing- market bust, and highly leveraged companies borrowed readily at low interest rates.

Finally, while Biden can point to external factors that have contributed to inflation, his claims that he should bear no responsibility ring hollow. In the first quarter of 2021, Larry Summers, treasury secretary under Clinton, warned Biden that his signature piece of economic legislation, the American Rescue Plan, would overheat the economy.

That $1.9 trillion package came on top of the previous year’s $3 trillion bipartisan budget response to the Covid-19-induced recession. It also came at a time when the economy was recovering strongly from that recession and inflation was beginning to pick up.

After having been overly complacent about the risk of inflation, the Fed now seems on the attack against inflation. In addition to

signaling that it will raise interest rates by a half percentage point rather than a quarter percentage point, the Fed is now committed to rapidly reduce its balance sheet by not rolling over its bond holdings when they fall due.

This means that instead of supplying $120 billion a month in liquidity to the market as it did last year, the Fed will now be withdrawing $95 billion a month.

This could spell even more trouble for American families. In the past, there have been very few occasions when the Fed has succeeded in squeezing inflation out of the economy without precipitating an economic recession. And this time, the Fed’s tightening will be occurring against the backdrop of equity, housing and credit market bubbles that the Fed itself created by its prolonged period of ultra-easy monetary policy.

By raising interest rates and committing to rapidly run down the size of its balance sheet, the Fed could very well trigger the bursting of those bubbles. As occurred in 2008, this could precipitate a deep economic recession. And all of this could be happening as Americans go to the polls in November.

If there is a lesson for future politicians to learn from the Democratic Party’s likely shellacking, it’s the importance of taking the election cycle into account when making major economic policy initiatives. The key mistake that Biden made was to engage in excess budget stimulus too soon without consideration of the upcoming midterms.

To be sure, his American Rescue Plan did produce a strong economic boom last year.

However, it also contributed to the surge in inflation and set up the conditions for an economic bust on the eve of the midterms. Unlike Reagan’s calculated decision long ago to suffer short-term political pain to defeat inflation and spur long-term growth, Biden may have set himself for suffering both now and later.

D E S M O N D L AC H M A N I S A S E N I O R F E L L OW AT T H E A M E R I C A N E N T E R P R I S E I N ST I T U T E A N D FO R M E R D E P U T Y D I R E C T O R AT T H E I N T E R NAT I O NA L M O NE TA RY F U N D ’S P O L I C Y D E V E L O P M E N T A N D R E V I E W D E PA RT M E N T. C H R I S S T I R E WA LT I S A S E N I O R F E L L OW AT T H E A M E R I C A N E N T E R P R I S E I N ST I T U T E A N D A C O N T R I B U T I N G E D I T O R F O R T H E D I S PAT C H .

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(UKRAINIAN) REFUGEES WELCOME COULD THE WAR IN UKRAINE MARK A TURNING POINT FOR MIGRANTS IN EUROPE?

BY B E N O Î T MO R E N N E

D

iana Artomova had just made it into Poland when her phone lit up with a call. A woman was on the line, returning a call the 21-year-old Ukrainian had made a few hours before. It was the early days of the war and Artomova had been trying to reach a friend living in Katowice, in southern Poland, who would help her settle in this new country. But she’d misdialed the number, and now she found herself talking to an unknown Polish woman. The stranger was unfazed. “Poland is with you,” she told Artomova in Russian. “Stay strong.”

The brief interaction mirrored the deluge of support Artomova and more than five million other refugees from Ukraine have received since Russia invaded the country on February 24. Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova have collectively taken in more than two million refugees. Airline, bus and train companies have offered free transportation to Ukrainians looking to resettle in neighboring countries. The European Union resurrected a two-decade-old directive to automatically allow refugees to work and access welfare within the 27-nation bloc for up to three years.

From New York, Julia Hall, the deputy director for research at the European regional office of Amnesty International, has watched these developments in bewilderment. She’s had a hard time believing these are the same countries that have had no scruples in pushing back Middle Eastern and African migrants in recent years.

The leaders of Hungary and Poland have consistently described migrants hailing from

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Muslim-majority countries as a security threat. The Polish Parliament, in a bid to deter migrants from crossing over from Belarus, last year approved the construction of a $407 million high-tech border wall. In Slovakia, migrants held in detention centers are guarded by uniformed, truncheon-carrying policemen.

“It’s really hard to find a way to justify the treatment of those people against the treatment of Ukrainian nationals,” says Hall.

Many human rights activists and lawyers have similarly been scratching their heads, both amazed at the extraordinary display

THE CRISIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR EUROPE TO HIT THE RESET BUTTON ON WHO IT DECIDES TO LET IN.

of solidarity and aggrieved that it would be so selective. Now, some say that the current refugee crisis presents an opportunity for Europe to hit the reset button on who it decides to let in. Others, however, argue that the E.U.’s response to the mass displacement of Ukrainians will only accelerate existing trends. But all agree that the war in Ukraine could mark a turning point for Europe’s migrant policies and become a model for

refugee crises in the future. a.m. on February 24 when Artomova’s mother woke her up. Russian tanks were rolling across the border. They had to leave Kyiv — now. Her father would drive her to the Polish border, about 400 miles west of Ukraine’s capital. The young woman hurriedly donned a black jacket — a gift from her dad — stuffed her mom’s mustard yellow scarf and yellow Ugg beanie in an old rucksack and a suitcase, and hopped in her father’s Opel. Traffic jams stretched out for miles as thousands of Ukrainians drove to safety. To pass the time, Artomova and her father made jokes about the Russian army’s dismal performances and listened to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s uplifting speeches on their smartphones.

As they got closer to the border, they picked up Polish radio frequencies. “We were trying to learn a new language,” says Artomova, who has long, jet-black hair and almond-shaped eyes. In Medyka, a border crossing between Ukraine and Poland, they found throngs of greasy-haired women pushing strollers, children and a few men standing in long lines, waiting to be waved past a counter nestled in a low-slung building. Her father dropped her off and prepared to drive back to Kyiv. Zelenskyy had ordered general mobilization and most men ages 18 to 60 were forbidden from leaving the country. “Take care of yourself,” they told one another.

It only took Artomova an hour to make it across the border. Once on the other side, it dawned on her she was on her own in a foreign

IT WAS 5

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AB OV E : U K RAINIAN RE F U GE E S RE C E IV E F OOD AT A T E MP ORARY S H E LT E R AT T H E MAIN RAILWAY STAT ION IN K RAKOW, P OL AND. T H E INVAS ION OF U K RAINE BY RU SS IA H AS F ORC E D MORE T H AN 6 MIL L ION U K RAINIANS TO F L E E T H E COU NT RY.

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L E F T: AID WORK E RS ASS IST WOME N AND C H IL DRE N AS T H E Y C ROSS F ROM WAR-TORN U K RAINE INTO P OL AND.

JUNE 2022

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to Wi-Fi at a local MacDonald's and call her parents via Telegram. In the afternoon, her friend, a student in Katowice, picked her up and drove back with her to this southern Polish city. Local authorities there were making student dorms available to newcomers, and university officials soon gave Artomova a laptop, store coupons and an envelope containing 1,000 złoty, the equivalent of a little over $230.

She was especially grateful for the laptop as she was still working remotely for an information technology company.

The whole city was seemingly pitching in.

At the main train station, volunteers in clown and rabbit costumes ambled about the main hall, high-fiving children and handing out squeezable applesauce pouches. Seven universities joined efforts to throw a charity concert.

The University of Silesia arranged for 1,600 Ukrainians to be lodged in dorms on campus in addition to being offered medical care and free Polish courses, university officials say.

“Everyone is involved,” says Barbara Mikołajczyk, a law professor at the University of Silesia who specializes in immigration law.

M I G R AN TS R E ST AT A M A K E SHIF T E NC AM P ME N T O N THE B O R D E R B E TW E E N B E L A R US A N D P O L AN D, AS B O R D E R G UA R DS F R O M B OTH CO U NTR IE S LO O K O N .

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country, and she started to cry. Still, she marveled at how Poles were mobilizing to assist refugees like her. Volunteers stood behind crates of fruits in blue-and-orange pop-up tents and handed bananas and oranges to Ukrainians. A man on the Ukrainian side had recommended that she avail herself of the free tea distributed there; there might not be any in Poland. But the man was wrong — hot cups were being passed around here, too.

Soon, a woman pointed Artomova to a bus headed for Przemyśl, the first leg in her long journey to Warsaw. Once there, she spent the day at a refugee center. She was able to connect

T H AT S U C H A profusion of refugees could so readily be absorbed into the fabric of an E.U. country has been somewhat mystifying to Mikołajczyk and other observers. When more than one million refugees — mostly young men fleeing war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — came knocking on Europe’s doors in 2015, they were met with staunch opposition and incendiary rhetoric that likened them to terrorists. “The immigrant bomb is coming,” read a headline in Il Giornale, a right-wing Italian newspaper.

Countries in the Balkans hastily built razor-wire fences along their borders. Law enforcement officers reportedly set attack dogs on migrants and beat them with batons.

In Poland, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the right-wing Law and Justice Party, said migrants would bring “parasites and protozoa.”

His party won by a landslide in the parliamentary elections that year and has since been in power; anti-immigration, far-right parties from France and Hungary to Germany similarly made electoral gains.

There were notable exceptions to Europe’s collective reluctance. Germany gave asylum to more than one million refugees, many fleeing Russian airstrikes that leveled building after building in Syria. But public sentiment soured all the same. A median 50 percent of Europeans surveyed by Pew in 10 E.U. countries in

normal policymaking,” says Tan. According to ​​Amnesty International’s Hall, Europe will now have a hard time justifying pushing back other migrants under the pretense it doesn’t have the resources to handle new arrivals. In March, the European Commission announced it was planning on releasing 3.4 billion euros to fund member states’ spending on education, health care and housing for Ukrainian refugees. “We definitely know that it’s possible for us to absorb people who really need refuge in Europe,” she says. “We see that happening right before our very eyes.”

In the eyes of Kleist, there’s a risk that the current response to the mass displacement of Ukrainians will usher in a new era where asylum isn’t considered a democratic right, but a political choice host countries are free to make or not. “This is the return to Cold War politics when refugees from Communist countries were given asylum,” he says. Now, asylum could become “a tool in a new conflict between authoritarian and democratic countries, while border control for other refugees undermines the right to asylum and the rule of law.” couple of weeks in Katowice, Artomova boarded a train to Warsaw, free of charge. Through a friend, she was able to find a white-walled studio apartment on the second floor of an eight-story building, which she rents for the equivalent

AFTER SPENDING A

of $540 a month.

This is what a day in her new life looks like now: She wakes up at 9 a.m., works remotely for three hours, catches a cab to work — buses can be capricious — and makes her way to her IT company’s Warsaw office, hastily opened as employees relocated to Poland. She’s been working six days a week and hasn’t had time to visit the Royal Castle or the Uprising Museum, which is dedicated to the Polish resistance to Nazis during World War II. She’s made a few intriguing discoveries. Local food isn’t that different from what she’s used to at home: Like their western Ukrainian neighbors, Poles adore salceson, a terrine made from pork cuts. Warsaw itself doesn’t feel that foreign either — she can hear Ukrainian and Russian spoken in the cobbled streets. When they address Artomova in Polish, waitresses at cafes fail to conceal a thick Ukrainian accent.

Some Ukrainians have started returning to Kyiv now that the Russian army has recentered its efforts to the east. But for now, Artomova plans on staying put in Warsaw. Her father is supporting the Territorial Defence Forces in the capital, and her mother is staying with relatives in northwestern Ukraine. This makes Artomova the only breadwinner. She doesn’t anticipate that IT jobs will be in Kyiv anytime soon. “Maybe it’s even better if I stay here and work here,” she says.

DOM INI KA ZA RZYC KA/N URPHOTO VI A GE TT Y IM AG E S

2016 said they believed that refugees would take jobs and welfare away from rightly entitled citizens.

While migratory pressure in Europe had largely subsided before the war in Ukraine, countries like Poland on occasion whipped up some of the repressive tactics they’d used in the past. When Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus let Middle Eastern and Afghan refugees cross its border, ostensibly to orchestrate a humanitarian crisis at the doors of the E.U., Poland restricted media access, doubled the number of troops at its border to about 6,000 and pushed refugees back. Migrants who talked to Amnesty International reported being detained in overcrowded rooms, subjected to strip searches and tased.

Olaf Kleist, a researcher at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research in Berlin, chalks up the disparate treatment of Ukrainian nationals and other migrants in part to racism and xenophobia.

“Non-European and non-Christian refugees haven’t been accepted,” he says, but “white Ukrainian refugees are welcome.”

But there are other factors figuring prominently in the E.U.’s willingness to open its borders to Ukrainian refugees, experts say. Unlike Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis, Ukrainians don’t need a visa to travel into the E.U., says Nikolas Tan, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. This means that allowing them in may not represent as big a leap. Then there’s the strong sense of shared identity between Eastern European nations and Ukraine, which for decades lived under the yoke of the Soviet Union. “Ukrainians are seen as victims of a common enemy rather than being individually persecuted,” Kleist says.

It also helps that Ukrainians have long worked in the E.U. as economic migrants, says Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, a researcher on international migration at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. After war broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and millions of people left the country, Germany jumped on the opportunity to fill vacant jobs and relaxed labor laws to make it easier for employers to hire Ukrainian workers. Poland was the main destination country and, as of 2017, employed an estimated 900,000 Ukrainians.

Still, the E.U.’s decision to lift all restrictions on movement for Ukrainians within the bloc for up to three years represents a drastic move. “Time will tell whether the current approach to those displaced by the Ukraine conflict is a paradigm shift or an exception to

P OL IS H S OL DIE RS E RE C T A B ORDE R F E NC E B E T WE E N B E L ARU S A N D PO LA N D. P OL AND ACC U S E D B E L ARU S OF S PARK ING T H E B ORDE R C RIS I S I N 2021 BY F ORC ING RE F U GE E S F ROM AF GH ANISTAN AC ROSS T H E BO R D E R .

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THE FATE OF OLD FAITHFUL ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST ICONIC NATURAL WONDERS MAY BE RUNNING OUT OF STEAM

BY B E N O Î T MO R E N N E

L

et’s say i put on a heat-resistant suit, persuaded a reckless scientist to miniaturize me (à la “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”) and rappelled into the Old Faithful geyser.

After going down 20 feet into the geyser’s vent — which is about three feet wide — I’d find myself passing through a much more narrow four-inch slot that eventually gives way to an alcove. There, I’d find water cascading through rocks — an underground waterfall of sorts. This rain and snowmelt passes through faults up to 3.1 miles deep in the plateau. Once it’s heated by the partly molten magma underlying Yellowstone, it boils its way back up through the cracks.

Like commuters jostling to hop off a bus at rush hour, bubbles start crowding into bagpipe-like tubes, forcing water up and out of the geyser. The pressure drops for a second.

Then, suddenly, there’s a loud POP! The boiling water is now steam, ballooning to 1,500 times its original size before detonating upward in a 244-degree Fahrenheit fiery jetstream. Traveling at supersonic speeds, I would catapult back out of the furnace at heights of up to 184 feet.

Fun, if it wasn’t so deadly.

About 90 minutes later, the process repeats itself, and Old Faithful explodes again.

This is roughly the same interval that has bridged its eruptions for more than 20 years.

It’s kind of like the Jerry Seinfeld of geysers 34

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— a charismatic creature that predictably delivers (watery) punchlines. It can be taken for granted that water bursting through the earth is, in itself, a miracle of nature. To erupt, geysers need vast amounts of heat, a large supply of water, and, crucially, the right cavities and fractures underground to channel pressurized liquid to the surface.

THE BIG HAND OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS TURNING OFF THE SPIGOT TO YELLOWSTONE.

This restrictive formula explains why there are only about 1,000 known geysers in the world, and why half of them can be found in Yellowstone National Park: The plateau harbors all of these elements in abundant quantities. This, in turn, explains why about four million visitors take to the park’s planked walkways to gawk and awe at them every year.

On a frigid day this April, I’m one of them.

But as I wait to watch Old Faithful erupt for the first time, grim predictions in a research letter published two years ago in Geophysical Research Letters (a peer-reviewed journal) cross my mind. “Climate models project increasingly severe droughts by the mid-21st century, suggesting that geyser eruptions could become less frequent or completely cease,” wrote lead study author Shaul Hurwitz. The big hand of climate change is turning off the spigot to Yellowstone. about the park with Mara Reed, a cheerful doctoral student who studies geysers at the University of California, Berkeley. She’s wearing a bright bumblebee-yellow jacket, black rain pants and a beanie that mimics the color gradients in some of the park’s hot springs — green, purple, blue, yellow, orange and red. A self-described “hydrothermal zealot,” Reed, 26, navigates Yellowstone with a preternatural instinct. I somewhat expect her to wave at geothermal features as she describes them. “If you were to give this one a name, what would it be?” she asks as we plod through foot-deep snow past a hole in the ground. The tiny geyser gurgles up hot water and sounds like a thirsty dog lapping from a bowl. “I call it the slurper,” she says.

Looking at the almost bucolic landscape, framed by woodsy hills and mountains, it’s hard

I’VE BEEN TRAIPSING

ILLU STR ATION BY C H R I S G A LL

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THE WEST

Y E L LOWSTONE NATI ONAL PARK I S HOME TO NORRIS B AS IN GE YS E R, AB OV E , AND H AL F OF T H E 1 ,0 0 0 GE YS E RS ON T H E PLA N E T.

to fathom that we’re atop a massive volcano.

Only from heights that aircraft can reach can one make out the contour of the caldera that covers a large swath of the park — the result of an epochal eruption dating back 630,000 years. About five miles under my waterproof boots are two huge chambers filled in part with molten rock. The energy released by magmatic fluids largely explains why thousands of small earthquakes — 2,773 recorded last year — are released in swarms across the crater, with most being imperceptible to visitors. These molten rocks supply the heat that boils the snowmelt and rainwater seeping through the soil. And this water, in turn, fuels the geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mud pots that make Yellowstone, well, Yellowstone.

This complex machinery is what made Reed fall in love with the region. She’s stopped counting the number of times she’s journeyed to the Upper Geyser Basin. This area concentrates some 300 geysers over a stretch of land smaller than Central Park. As a college student, Reed spent two summers running around the basin to catch as many eruptions as she could (in between scooping ice cream cones for one of the concessionaires, that is).

When Steamboat, the world’s tallest geyser, started erupting again in 2018 after a threeand-a-half-year hiatus, she drove all the way 36

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from Portland with a friend to witness the event. They sat in front of the geyser all day, then put their puffy coats on as day turned to night. After three small bursts, the geyser took off under the stars. “A lot of geysers are like puzzles,” she says. “It’s really fun for me to think about them and try to figure them out.”

With fellow Berkeley student Anna Barth and University of Utah professor Jamie Farrell, Reed’s spent the past few days setting up a network of seismic instruments and a hydrophone to listen to bubbles forming and collapsing under the surface of two hot springs. Hot springs function more or less like tiny volcanoes, and geoscientists use them as proxies to safely study their larger congeners, says Michael Manga, a professor of earth and planetary science at U.C. Berkeley and Reed’s thesis adviser.

Volcanologists aren’t the only ones doing fieldwork here. NASA scientists come to study the microbes that thrive in the geysers’ scalding, acidic water. They are the closest thing we have to monstrous geysers on Saturn and Neptune’s moons, and they can help us understand whether springs on these celestial bodies contain life. It “provides that unique geyser environment which you just can’t find elsewhere,” says Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA.

But climate change is warping the pristine conditions of this gigantic open-air laboratory. Temperatures in Yellowstone are likely the warmest they’ve been for the last 800,000 years, according to a climate assessment of the greater Yellowstone area published last summer — and they’re projected to rise by five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. This means that what underpins the geysers’ existence could be compromised as the water supply contracts.

Scientists know this because it’s happened before, to none other than Old Faithful.

H U RWITZ AND T WO other researchers stepped off the boardwalk, snaking around the backside of Old Faithful. The men, bundled in warm parkas, bright yellow vests (as to not be mistaken for intruders) and thick gloves, carefully trod around the cone. It was the winter of 2019. The scientists were scanning the mound for relics from the past — stumps of fossilized trees.

Hurwitz, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, had long known about the trees. In 1956, a park naturalist named George Marler found petrified wood on the mound.

He’d been attempting to determine Old Faithful’s age and thought the fossil could provide a hint. Using (the recently invented) radiocarbon dating technique — which leverages the presence of carbon-14 in organic materials to

date them — he estimated that the specimen was about 700 years old. The tree, he posited, had once stood in a forest covering parts of the mound. If true, this finding had far-reaching implications. The reason there are no plants immediately around geysers is that the alkaline water they spit out doesn’t allow them to grow. For trees to spring up on Old Faithful, the geyser would have had to fall dormant.

Hurwitz heard through the grapevine that there may be not one, but several fossilized tree remnants on the mound. The rumors, it turned out, were well-founded. The men identified no fewer than 23 wood fossils around the geyser, ranging from fragments shorter than a paperclip to stems eight feet long. Some were loose; others solidly entombed in minerals deposited by thousands upon thousands of eruptions. They got samples from each and sent them to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a private lab in Massachusetts, for radiocarbon dating.

When he got the results back, Hurwitz was stunned. The trees had grown in a 100-year period stretching from approximately A.D. 1233 to 1362. This means that the geyser had stopped erupting long enough for trees to sprout and grow. If the mound was an ancient crime scene, then the petrified wood was the smoking gun. Hurwitz found the culprit soon after. An extreme drought had sucked the water out of the western U.S. between A.D. 800 and 1300, a period known as the “medieval warm period.” This coincided with the time trees towered over Old Faithful. “There was not enough water to feed the geyser, but there was still enough water to have trees grow,” Hurwitz says.

F IN DIN G S DON’T bode well for the future of Old Faithful. The region is in the throes of the worst drought in 1,200 years, scientists say. In Yellowstone, warming weather has already translated into more rainfall in the winter and less snow melting into streams, according to the Greater Yellowstone climate assessment. “Snow is the big supply of water to this region,” says Cathy Whitlock, a professor emerita of earth sciences at Montana State University and a co-author of the report.

“Losing snowpack is a big deal.”

That’s not to say all water will suddenly vanish from the park’s inner circuits. Geyser water comes in part from ancient reservoirs replenished over hundreds and possibly thousands of years. But if there’s less water trickling into the system, the overall pressure drops, which

T HE SE

means fewer eruptions, Hurwitz says. For this reason, he expects that the interval between Old Faithful’s eruptions will lengthen.

More staggered eruptions could have wide repercussions, Hurwitz says. If visitors find themselves having to wait longer to see Old Faithful — already one of the most trafficked areas — it means even more congestion in the park. The National Park Service is already struggling to handle the number of visitors, which stood at nearly five million last year.

In 2020 and 2021, it invested more than $100 million to improve transportation and reduce congestion.

Ultimately, there might be nothing to see at all. Protracted dry periods “might just shut off ” Old Faithful, Hurwitz says.

But that won’t mean that all geysers will react the same way to a dearth of water. “They all have their own personality,” says Manga, who co-authored the study on Old Faithful.

“Some are going to thrive and become more active. Some are going to curl up in a little ball and hide in the corner and go dormant.”

Another possibility is that as the number of eruptions starts to falter, the tubes through which water flows become clogged with minerals, blocking liquid. Large quantities of water stuck underground without pathways to the surface might have some effect on seismic activity, according to Manga. But, ultimately, “we don’t know the answer to these questions” yet, he says.

GEYSER WATER COMES IN PART FROM ANCIENT RESERVOIRS REPLENISHED OVER HUNDREDS AND POSSIBLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS. BUT IF THERE’S LESS WATER TRICKLING INTO THE SYSTEM, THE OVERALL PRESSURE DROPS, WHICH MEANS FEWER ERUPTIONS.

THR OU GH H E R S U NGL ASS E S ,

Reed checks her black digital watch. Old Faithful is due to erupt any minute now. We’re watching from an observation point overlooking the geyser’s mound, waiting for the first — public — eruption of the season. Even from this distance, we can make out the silhouettes of a couple dozen visitors standing by the geyser on the boardwalks, waiting.

Then, it happens. Water starts coming out in bursts, as though Old Faithful is clearing its throat before the grand recital. “Come on Fifi,” Reed says. The sprays gradually take up more space, drawing elegant arabesques reminiscent of the fountains soaring in front of the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas. “It’s trying really hard,” Reed says. Then there’s a jetting sound as an ivory column of water rises more than a hundred feet into the air. It towers there for over a minute, a frail edifice threatening to collapse any second. And then, it does. As suddenly as it’s emerged, Old Faithful returns to the earth.

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APA’S RETURN ONE OF MOUNTAINEERING’S MOST CELEBRATED LEGENDS IS CREATING UPWARD MOBILITY FOR HIS COMMUNITY

PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY BY

SPENSER HEAPS

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LHAKPA TENZING SHERPA WAS WRAPPED TIGHTLY IN A BLANKET, CARRIED BY HIS MOTHER, YILA FUTI SHERPA, IN A BAMBOO BASKET. IT WAS SPRING 1956.

THE SNOWS HIGH above the village of Thame — located in Nepal’s Solukhumbu region near Mount Everest — were beginning to melt.

While tending to the family’s yaks in the high alpine meadows above her home, Yila heard a loud crash. It sounded like the mountain above her was heaving into collapse. She knew what this sound meant. With Lhakpa on her back, she dashed for cover beneath a rocky crag, just before an avalanche roared down — a torrent of snow plowing away nearly everything in its path and burying the rest.

As the avalanche subsided, Yila went to comfort baby Lhakpa, taking her basket off her back. But her son wasn’t there. In a frantic search of despair, she clawed through the snow, desperately hoping to save her son.

Then, suddenly, his scream pierced the silence.

Lhakpa was alive.

For the Sherpa people who inhabit the mountainous regions of Nepal and Tibet, almost all children are named for the day of the week on which they were born. Lhakpa means “Wednesday.” But, the high lama of the nearby monastery and his parents chose a new name for this child to celebrate the miracle of his survival. He was renamed Apa, meaning “love.”

later, Apa looked down at the world from the summit of Chomolungma — meaning “Goddess Mother of the World” in his native language. It was his 21st time on the summit of the peak also called Mount Everest.

He had set a new world record.

In fact, he had broken his own record 11 times. His strength in the mountains had earned him a new nickname: Super Sherpa.

During his career as a guide on the highest mountain in the world, Apa Sherpa had risen to fame in his country and the worldwide adventure community. His mountaineering

FIFTY-FIVE YEARS

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income had provided a good living in Nepal, but moving the family to Draper, Utah, allowed Apa and his wife Yangin's children access to better education and opportunities.

But it felt bittersweet. He loved climbing Everest, the first few times. But, “that many times? No.” Turns out, the career of one of the world’s most decorated mountaineers was a career he never wanted.

“Climbing was not my goal,” Apa says. “I wanted to get an education and become a doctor … I wanted to save the people’s lives.”

But in the Khumbu and Solukhumbu regions of Nepal, pursuing an education is a choice not all are free to make. In fact, after his father passed away when he was only 12, Apa had to begin working full time as a mountain porter to support his family.

He says he wants the people who grow up in the shadow of Mount Everest to have the chance to climb the mountain if they want to, but not be compelled to because it’s the only way to feed their families. “If they have the education, then they have a choice,” Apa explains. His dream is that with better access to education, the next generation of Nepali children won’t have to risk their lives in the mountains to provide for their families.

THE YEAR FOLLOWING his retirement in 2011, Apa

and his business partner, Jerry Mika, opened the Apa Sherpa Foundation. In order to provide educational opportunities in Khumbu and Solukhumbu, the foundation pays teacher salaries, runs a hot lunch program to keep kids nourished and supplies hard goods like computers and furniture for local schools. The foundation is small now, but Apa hopes it can grow large enough to expand aid to all of Nepal, not just the region he grew up in.

For the past 11 years, Apa has flown

annually from Utah to Khumbu to see firsthand what the kids need and how the foundation can help. He brings a cadre of trekkers with them to help deliver the aid, and with the hope that they will become ambassadors for the foundation.

But because of the pandemic, it’s been three years since Apa was last here. To limit the spread of Covid-19, Nepal shut its doors to the tourists that flock annually to the Everest region. Now, with restrictions lifted, tourists and climbers have started to return, but Apa says the trails and teahouses are still too quiet.

It’s a reminder of the importance of his goal of creating a more diverse economy.

IN THAME, APA receives a hero’s welcome. Ironically, school is canceled for his arrival, but the students still come, as do all of their parents.

Along with school officials. And townspeople.

And Sherpa cultural groups. It’s a celebration.

Buddhist mantras are recited and offerings are made. Kids perform dances and present Apa with khata scarves. After, teacher Om Prasad Bhattarai gives a lengthy speech in which he calls Apa the village’s “guardian.”

In Nepal, government support for education is piecemeal. Only six of the nine teachers in Thame are funded by the government. The donations from the foundation are critical in creating salaries that other teachers can depend on.

Apa wears a wide grin as the reception unfolds. Although he’s reached plenty of summits, helping kids get a better education is the pinnacle of his work.

“I’m very proud, the kids are doing good,” he says with a soft smile. Apa Sherpa may not have been a doctor like he dreamed as a child, but here and now in his hometown, he’s found a different way to save lives.

A PA S H E R PA H E LD TH E WO R LD R E CO R D FO R M OST S U M M I TS O F M O U N T E V E R E ST BY A S I N G LE PE R S O N U N T I L H I S R E CO R D WAS B R O K E N I N 2018 .

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BOYS WORK I N A CLASSROOM AT T H AME B AS IC S C H OOL , WH IC H S E RV E S AB OU T 48 ST U DE NTS .

APA SHERPA DELI VERS BRAND NE W COMP U T E RS TO T E AC H E RS AT T H E T H AME B AS IC S C H OOL .

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B IP IN R E I , 7, E ATS H I S LU N C H OF V E G E TA B LE S AND D H A L B AT AT T H E S H R E E PE M A C H H O LI N G G H YA N G B AS IC S C H O O L.

YANJEE S H E R PA , L E F T, WO R KS I N T H E K I TC H E N AT T H E S H R E E PE M A C H H O LI N G G H YA N G B AS IC S C H O O L I N GH AT, N E PA L, W H E R E T H E A PA S H E R PA F OU N DAT I O N FU N DS A H OT LU N C H PR O G R A M .

YANG J I N S H E R PA GRE E TS A PA S H E R PA’ S WIF E, A LS O N A M E D YANG J I N , R I G H T, DU RIN G A V I S I T TO T H E V I LLAG E O F T H AM O.

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PORTERS CARRY LOADS BETW E E N NAMC H E B AZ AAR AND K H U MJU NG IN NE PAL’S K H U MB U RE GION.

A PA SHERPA AND A GROUP OF TREKKE RS C ROSS A SUSPENSI ON BRI DGE OVER THE I MJA K H OL A RIV E R.

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A YAK- COW H Y B RID C AL L E D A DZO, OR ZOP K IO, FE R R I E S GOODS ON A T RAIL JU ST B E LOW E V E RE ST B AS E C A M P.

A BUDDHIST C HO R TEN STAN DS A B OVE THA ME, A PA SHE R PA’ S HO M ETOWN , AT SUN R ISE .

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THE ARYA TARA WOMEN’S G ROU P WE LCOME S APA S H E RPA WIT H A RIC E WINE C E RE MONY AT THE SHREE PEMA C H H OL ING GH YANG B AS IC S C H OOL IN GH AT, NE PAL .

THAME, APA SHERPA’S H OME TOWN, AT S U NRIS E ON AN AP RIL MORNING.

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APA SHERPA GREETS FRI ENDS AT THE EVEREST BASE CAMP.

NURBU SHERPA I S A SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER AT THE SHREE PEMA CHHOLI NG GHYANG BASI C SCHOOL I N GHAT, NEPAL.

KU NGA PAL MU S H E RPA, 4, STAYS AT T H E H OST E L OF T H E T H AME S C H OOL , WH IC H GIV E S C H IL DRE N A P L AC E TO STAY TO AVOID LONG, DANGE ROU S T RAV E L B E T WE E N RU RAL H OME S AND T H E S C H OOL .

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SE A N FITZG ERAL D

ROUGHING IT,

By Stephen Fried

FOR WELL OVER A CENTURY, TRAVELERS HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR REBIRTH IN THE AMERICAN WEST WITH A TYPE OF INCREASINGLY PAMPERED RUSTICITY. IT MAY HAVE REACHED ITS APEX AT TED TURNER’S NEW MEXICO RANCH.

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DiANe & I

“ We came from all over ... And all of us ... were actuated by a common purpose — we were going West to see the country and rough it ... We were a daring lot and resolute; each and every one of us was brave and blithe to endure the privations that such an expedition must inevitably entail.

Let the worst come; we were prepared! If there wasn’t any of the hothouse lamb, with imported green peas, left, we’d worry along on a little bit of the fresh shad roe, and a few conservatory cucumbers on the side. That’s the kind of hardy adventurers we were!”

Irvin Cobb, on the way to the Grand Canyon in “Roughing It De Luxe,” Saturday Evening Post, June 7, 1913

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are driving fast along a lonely stretch of Interstate 25 in northeast New Mexico, where the weather and landscape appear consistently perfect — blue skies over endless, unremarkable prairies — because there is almost nothing for the fierce seasonal winds to actually whip except for our car. Oh, and the countless tumbleweeds skittering across the highway, five or six at a time, some like somersaulting little bunnies, others as big as exercise balls, making us wonder just how many of them it would take to actually stop a Nissan Rogue SUV stone dead, and then how we might go about unraveling them from the axles. I can only imagine how that AAA call would go — if there was cell service.

We are far from where we’re supposed to be, but we don’t know quite how far, because we’re headed to a place where Google Maps or Waze themselves get lost.

It’s Vermejo Park Ranch, at over 550,000 acres the largest single piece of privately owned land in the United States: covering significantly more territory than Bryce, Zion and Canyonlands national parks put together. And it has been known for over a century as a place owned by illustrious public people who weren’t inviting you to visit: first a Chicago millionaire, then a group of Los Angeles millionaires, then Texas millionaires, and then Ted Turner and Jane Fonda. After the couple split in 2001, Turner started to slowly turn Vermejo into a wildlife park and very highend hotel for 50 to 60 people a night. Today it is one of the most expensive places to stay overnight in the nation: The least costly room, during offseason, can run as high as $2,000 a night (for two people, meals included). The best rooms, in-season, are twice as much. It’s worth noting that Amangiri resort in southern Utah is actually twice as expensive.

We’re going not only because I’m curious to see the place. I also have an intense fascination with the phenomenon of “roughing it deluxe” and its role in the development of the American West — beginning with the generations after the Civil War, when the West became the “new America” that people from the North and the South could still romanticize in a way they had once viewed the original colonies.

in decent hotels — he became especially fond of the first Fred Harvey hotel along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, in Florence, Kansas, where he loved it that the hotel employed a fishing and hunting guide named “Uncle Joe,” and the chef, William Phillips, was always willing to cook what you caught.

I have an intense fascination with the phenomenon of

“roughing it deluxe ” and its role in the development of the American West.

But St. Kames also understood the challenges of the West and so traveled with his own collapsible rubber bathtub.

Another favorite is Irvin Cobb, reporter and humorist, who decided to go cross-country by train for a series of articles in 1913 — the first one focusing largely on his visit to the

Grand Canyon, where he coined that phrase “roughing it deluxe.” Cobb saw himself as the Mark Twain of leisure travel and, much like St. Kames, made fun of the excesses he was seeing while also indulging in them. This is a time when some had cars but few had access to roads — rich people would have their cars shipped by rail to the canyon, so they could ride along the newly paved rim road; or ride mules down the narrow canyon trails, while posing for photographs that would be processed by the time they rode back up. Cobb sympathized with those mules. While it was contrary to their “religion and politics to slip off,” he explained, when his mule “came to a particularly scary spot, which was every minute or so, she would stop dead still ... (and) gaze steadily downward, with a despondent droop of her fiddle-shaped head and a suicidal gleam in her mournful eyes.”

As we drive north, we can see the whole history of how the railroads changed the West.

Less than a hundred yards to our right are the tracks originally put there in 1879. And somewhere in-between — occasionally marked, usually in the name of a windswept bathroom

BRET T SC HRE CKE NG OST/COU RT ESY TE D TU RNE R RE S E RVE S

And once the trains began connecting the country, not only was new commerce and migration possible, but so was a different kind of leisure travel — including the taking of trains to rivers largely unfished, herds of trophy animals unculled and intense outdoor experiences that could be over in time for a lovely lunch or tea.

Writing about this, for some, became a way of paying for their own experiences, and became part of the push for immigration to the U.S. and later the “See America First” push to compete with Europe for leisure travel.

One of the first was Samuel Nugent Townshend, a columnist for the British publication The Field, whose work appeared in its “Travel and Colonization” section under his pen name “St. Kames.” After being sent to cover the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, he was chosen as one of a half-dozen foreign journalists — from Vienna, Brussels, Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg — to travel the country by train and write about their specialties, his “being agriculture, stock-feeding, scenery, and shooting.” (Their journeys and writings are an offbeat history book or Netflix series waiting to happen.) In some places, St. Kames stayed

VERMEJ O RANCH I NCLUDES T H E C ASA GRANDE , B U ILT IN 1 9 07, AND T H E MAIN DINING H AL L .

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The phrase “roughing it deluxe” was coined in 1913 by Saturday Evening Post writer

I rvin C obb ,

lower melted lakes when the sun is high. So I reserved that.

Diane said that after years of Covid quarantine, she just wanted to shoot stuff. So, I arranged for us to do his and hers “rifle shooting” as our very first activity after arriving. For a two-day visit, you get four total activities.

We could have picked horseback riding, archery, various nature tours and walks, electric bikes — many options. But we wanted to keep it rough: shoot, fish, eat.

There seems to be a tradition in the Southwest that the more your property is worth, the crappier-looking your security phone system should appear. This is no exception. The dialing information is on a sheet attached by yellow plastic pushpins. When the phone doesn’t work the first time, I feel a little panicky because we are miles and miles from cellphone service. But, finally, on the third try, someone does answer and the gate — which says “Vermejo Park Ranch” in large, forged metal letters next to a silhouette of an elk head — slowly opens. We’re in.

For the first mile or so, the view is unremarkable — great clouds but, in New Mexico, it’s almost always a good cloud day. Then you realize the gate position was probably chosen for its “nothing to see here” quality. Because once inside, the road turns and you’re suddenly

S EA N FITZG E RA LD

sent on a trip kind of like ours to explore something similarly fascinating and utterly American.

stop — is the old Santa Fe Trail for wagon trains that the railroad supplanted. This tells much of the story of this part of New Mexico, the main value of which has always been connecting areas that are more populated (by people and livestock) in Colorado and Texas.

We finally reach tiny Raton, and our directions are to simply turn left, and head west on state Route 555 for 35 miles. The first 32 are supposedly paved and then, according to the instructions, “the road transitions to gravel.”

As we drive along, I realize just how spotty my knowledge is of Vermejo. Since I didn’t tell them I was coming as a journalist, I mostly know what’s posted on their website, which is good-looking but doesn’t offer a lot of detail, and what I could learn doing online history research. It’s like the people who go there just already know.

After I prepaid for the room online, I got an email from our “reserve ambassador,” Sarianna, explaining we needed to reserve our “activities” from the “adventure guide.” For each day, each guest gets two activities — most are free and included, but if you want a private guide, like I wanted for fishing, it was another $350 for a half-day and $475 for a full. At certain times of year, because of the extremes in elevation on the property, you can ice fish up high in the morning and then fish in one of the

SUN SET ON BEEHI VE-SHAPED CHARCOAL K IL NS AT C ATS K IL L GH OST TOWN (U P P E R K IL NS ), V E RME JO PARK RA N C H .

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still an hour and half off, we get back in the car and start touring the property. It is stupefyingly beautiful and intriguing, in all kinds of ways.

There are picture-postcard vistas, there are

W I T H O UR GUN P LAY APPOI NTMENT

STE PH E N F R IE D

large herds of wild animals that don’t come close — this isn’t a petting zoo — but are close enough and active enough to astonish even when they are just hanging out, being animals.

We pass herds of elk and deer and one very lost bison; we see wild turkeys and pheasants; and we see what looks like a lone bobcat but on closer examination as it runs off may have been a wolf. (All these identifications, of course, are based on the knowledge of wild animals we have accumulated while watching cable television in center city Philadelphia.) There is also gorgeous devastation. At one turn we encounter a run of very old, very large dead trees, like a football-field size sculpture about mortality.

What we do not see, much to our disappointment, is antlers. We received a notice that this is “shed hunting season” at Vermejo, when the male elk shed their antlers. Not only may guests keep up to two sets each, but the resort has its own antler packaging and shipping service.

So, in lieu of antlers, I give Diane a little bit of background on what we’re looking at.

Vermejo is part of what used to be called the “Maxwell Land Grant,” a huge swath of territory on the Colorado-New Mexico border, over 1.7 million acres, which was first taken from the Apache and Ute tribes and, later, after local Latino farmers tried to carve out little corners of it for themselves, it was taken from them as well, when courts ruled it was private land.

The Maxwells’ WS Ranch pastured cattle and sheep on the land. Around 1900, William H. Bartlett, the Chicago grain millionaire, bought one-third of the grant, partly as a retreat for his son with tuberculosis. Bartlett commissioned the original cluster of mission-style buildings that still make up the ranch. He also created the first of its many stocked trout lakes (part of the effort to introduce trout into New Mexico waters, to compete with Colorado for fishing tourists.)

Then, in the middle of the Roaring ’20s, a group of 96 high-profile Los Angeles businessmen and movie stars, led by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, chipped in and bought it together to start their own private fishing, hunting and what-evering club.

The group included Andrew Mellon — who was a member of a private fishing club in Pennsylvania that had caused the 1889 Johnstown Flood — as well as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cecil B. DeMille and Herbert Hoover. Actress Mary Pickford was one of the few female members, and had her own fishing cabin.

ST EPHEN FRIED

looking at a lush valley as far as the eye can see and, in the distance, snow-capped mountains, all of which are part of Turner’s property. And suddenly the eight main buildings of the ranch appear, like a small beautiful mission-style college campus that was airlifted into the middle of Southwest paradise. Most of them were designed by Chicago architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee, Frank Lloyd Wright’s mentor, for Vermejo’s original owner, opening in 1907. There’s a 25,000-square-foot main house, Casa Grande, made of stone with endless arches inside and out, and a bright red roof. There’s a smaller matching building of bedrooms and porches that was originally called Casa Minor but is now Turner House. In between them is a newer, log cabin-style building (replacing one that burned down). And behind all these are five “cottages” with multiple bedrooms: The “help” used to stay in these, now they go for $2,000 to $9,600 a night in-season (with occupancies of four to 10.) Some 25 miles away (but still on his property) there’s a separate eight-room fishing lodge, with its own cooking staff.

We are met in the carport by ambassador Sarianna, a lovely young woman who has a guy not so much take our bags out of the car but just take our car; she says he’ll put the luggage in the room and park it. We’re led into the first room of the log cabin building, and standing there beneath a stuffed elk head as big as the nose of a plane is a tall guy in a tan uniform, holding a tray with two teacups and two towels, which we are informed are both hot and moist.

After checking in, we look at our room on the first floor of the Turner House. It has a big, dark wood king bed and a large sitting area in front, with bay windows overlooking the property. The bathroom is big enough to accommodate a square dance. And while the room has many nice small touches, it’s missing one big one: a television. The hotel pamphlet says that if you really, really must have one, they will grudgingly bring a smart TV to your room. But they’d rather you watch the ones in the public spaces. Or just get outside and watch the big show.

T H E AU T H OR AND H IS WIF E TARGE T S H OOT ING, ONE OF MANY AC T IV IT IE S V E RME JO P ROV IDE S F OR GU E STS .

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L E F T: T H E AU T H OR WIT H ONE OF T H E MANY RAINB OW T ROU T H E C AU GH T AT V E RME JO.

ST EPHEN FRIED

JERRY FITZGERALD/D ISNEY GENERAL ENT ERTAINME NT CONTE NT VIA GE TTY

B E LOW: T E D T U RNE R B OU GH T V E RME JO IN 1 9 9 6 , WH IL E H E WAS MARRIE D TO JANE F ONDA.

After the Depression killed the club, the Chandlers held onto Vermejo until 1945, when they sold it to Fort Worth, Texas, oil millionaire W. J. Gourley. He was said to have pampered the massive property “as if it was his half-acre backyard,” and changed the culture of Vermejo visitors from Hollywood and media types to Texas good old boys. He dramatically expanded the cattle ranching done on the property, brought in several new species of game and stocked more lakes and streams.

He also sold coal and timber rights, beginning the mining and tree cutting, which continues to this day. Gourley died in 1970, mercifully before he could put in his planned golf course, ski slopes and airfield.

In 1972, the federal government almost bought Vermejo. The bill to fund the $26 million purchase passed the Senate, but failed to get traction in the House. So in 1973 it was sold to Houston-based Pennzoil, as a perk for company president and Bush family friend Bill Liedtke. In 1981 the firm donated the 100,000 acres farther from the ranch buildings to the Forest Service for a huge tax break. And then, in 1996 Ted Turner and Jane Fonda bought 54

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Vermejo, made it their private home, and set out to restore it in every way possible as long as it was natural and sustainable. The rest is living history. They divorced five years later, but Vermejo has been a living, growing project of Turner’s ever since.

Much of his work has been focused on the vast lands and infrastructure: The original eight buildings of the ranch were tastily refurbished and the log cabin fishing lodge was entirely reimagined. Turner also had the environmental science there taken more seriously: It’s not uncommon for research done there on bison genealogy or trout husbandry to be covered in Nature or other serious journals. But in the past six years especially, there has been more focus on making Vermejo a very special year-round family oriented hotel, and not just a hunting and fishing retreat. (There are early 20th-century lodges all over the country trying to make similar transitions from private or group ownership, with varying degrees of success.) Prices used to be closer to the highest end of hotels in New Mexico and Colorado, $500-$700 a night. But then the decision was made that Vermejo should instead be

competing with the most exotic nature hotels in America, Africa and elsewhere. Turner hired Jade McBride, who worked at Amangiri in Utah, and The Ranch at Rock Creek in Montana. He added electronic bikes and other family-friendly activities, and the room rates were more than doubled — but made inclusive of everything but alcohol (New Mexico doesn’t allow “all you can drink” deals), guides, and special meals and cooking classes.

It’s an intriguing experiment and still a stunning work in progress. But now it’s time to go shoot things.

to the main building to be picked up for rifle shooting by a tall, bearded guy named Eric. For most events, guests are transported in one of a small fleet of white, surprisingly clean four-seater pickup trucks. When we get to the shooting range, it’s all pretty straightforward and casual — as we would come to learn all of the service is at Vermejo

WE RE T U RN

a bruising rendezvous, and who knows where the bullet goes. I finish the clip so I won’t look like a wuss, but my true aim is not to hurt my shoulder again.

“Oh, it’s getting late,” I say halfheartedly.

“Better get back for dinner.” So, we drive back to the ranch, Diane beaming.

Dinner is served in the log cabin building.

Tonight it’s buffet style, but far from a typical buffet. The hand-sliced red meat choices are chateaubriand, elk loin, bison flank steak and lamb. The beef is amazing, and I try the bison because Turner is obsessed with bison and I don’t want to insult him. (He’s not in the dining room at that moment, but I always feel he is watching. He actually had been there that day fishing; we didn’t see him, but I did see his bag lunch in the cooler, because everyone’s is in there.) When Turner bought the place, it had been a working cattle farm for generations. He got rid of the cattle and instead encouraged the proliferation of bison, which have been depleted in the West ever since the rampant shooting of them — sometimes, appallingly, from train windows — which began with the coming of the railroads. It’s a symbol of undoing one of the nation’s most glaring environmental wrongs CO N T IN UED O N PAGE 83

Bison are so big they seem like an American version of an elephant or a giraffe.

That’s part of how Vermejo is being marketed, as a sort of American savannah nature preserve.

S EA N FITZG ERA LD

— and he sets up a 17 HMR-caliber rifle.

Diane has never fired a rifle before, so she goes first. Her aim is true, her trigger finger unflinching and, Eric has to admit, she’s a natural. The targets are nothing elaborate — a little red metal fox at 50 yards, a metal gopher at 100, some dangling red circles that spin around when you hit them. Diane makes contact on over 90 percent of her shots, which is borderline Annie Oakley.

I shoot far worse, but it’s still fun. A wind comes up, the sky is becoming overcast — and that’s a lot of sky to get suddenly darker — and I try best to aim well, but keep pulling the trigger rather than squeezing it. I do hit one of the targets at 200 yards — once — but constantly miss the closer ones. I do not feel manly at all. But I am fascinated by how much Diane likes this. When she finishes, she immediately announces that we will need to find a place for target practice in Philadelphia.

Eric has brought another rifle in case we want to try it. It’s much bigger and the 6.5 Creedmoor bullets — based on my knowledge that comes directly from TV police dramas — look like armor-piercing shells. I decide to take a try, just to show off for Diane. On the first shot, the rifle and my shoulder have

MORNI NG L IGH T ON MU NN L AK E , V E RME JO PARK RANC H .

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There are times, driving in the West, when the distance from point A to point B seems to expand, no matter how many miles you travel to shrink it. The mountain range or sagebrush or red rocks scroll by on an endless loop, and the next town only seems to get farther away. Eventually the ergonomics fail. The lower back gives in. The steering wheel grows ever sharper on the palms. Most of all, the stomach stirs. But here it comes, on the next bend.

A high-carb oasis. A place to stop and let the

family pour out of the car and into a booth. The slap of the menu on the table. The waitress who calls everyone — mom, dad, the kids — hon. Then, sweet relief. The eggs any way you like. The BLT stacked so high it’s javelined with what seems like the whole box of toothpicks. The strawberry shake as cold as an ice planet. The point is, there’s nothing like a summer road trip in the Intermountain West, and besides the enviable Instagram wall of scenery at every turn, the best parts are the eating spots in between. So earlier this year, Deseret Magazine staff fanned out across the land to discover or rediscover the Intermountain West’s most

iconic greasy spoons, cafes, steakhouses and diners. Here are the

delicious, odometer-punishing, noncardiologist-approved results.

the sign of a large, chocolate-dipped cone sits atop Delgadillo’s Snow Cap in Seligman, Arizona, drawing drivers off Route 66 for burgers that come out quick — and a gentle razzing by Snow Cap staff. Ask for a straw to go with your shake, and the woman behind the counter is likely to offer you a handful of dry straw. Cashiers have been known to feint squirting youngsters with mustard. All of it in honor of the Snow Cap’s founder, Juan Delgadillo, the self-described “clown of Route 66.”

Delgadillo built the diner from scrap lumber in 1953, back before Interstate 40 opened, bypassed the town and rendered America’s most storied roadway obsolete. The ’50s are kept alive, though, via the walls, decorated with hand-painted pictures of food, and old beer, and cola ads, and, naturally, Route 66 signs. The founder died in 2004, but he lives on, too, via “Juan’s Garden”

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where patrons sit amid old trucks and fuel pumps behind the restaurant.

Nowhere is the spirit of Juan Delgadillo more alive than in the diner’s seemingly forever joshing customer service. And no one carries the mantle more than his son John, who has helped take over the family business. On a recent Friday night, he and his wife, Rita, could be seen hustling around the kitchen, hot oil snapping as they cooked up French fries for a growing number of customers waiting outside for their order.

“Kiki?” John eventually called from the window as he set down a basket with a hamburger and a pile of fries topped with a potato in the shape of a smiley face.

His granddaughter and I, it turns out, have the same name, though spelled differently, and John explained that they call her Kiki.

I told him my friends call me Kiki, too, but he didn’t miss a beat.

“You have friends?” he said, and then he smiled. — CO DELGADILLO’S SNOW CAP 105 E. ANDY DEVINE AVE. KINGMAN, ARIZONA

MIDDLEGATE STATION 42500 AUSTIN HIGHWAY FALLON, NEVADA

KRISTI N MU RPH Y

“we had 28 military guys in here the other day,” Lorna, a server at Middlegate Station, says.

“Only six of ’em finished.” The item in question, the “Middlegate Monster,” comes with one and one-third pounds of ground beef, three slices of bread and heaping handfuls of classic burger fixins. “Myth or legend,” the menu description reads. “You decide.” I decide to go for it, seeking the glory — and commemorative T-shirt — that comes to all who finish the burger in one sitting.

Lorna briefs me on the extensive rules. “You get unlimited time,” she says. “You just can’t feed it to the dog or anything like that.”

Built in 1857 along the famed Pony Express route, Middlegate Station is technically listed as part of Fallon, Nevada, but falls about 45 minutes east of town, along U.S. 50 — “America’s loneliest road,” per the trucker caps on sale.

A hungry-looking border collie stares at me through the open front door as Lorna places the monstrosity before me. I don’t have a ruler handy, but I reckon it has to be eight inches tall, with a pair of onion rings and olives affixed to the top to resemble eyes; a pepperoncini for a nose; and a tomato slice for a tongue. As I take my first bite, Lorna regales me with more tales. Like the guy from Australia who researched the most efficient method — bread and fries first — and nailed it in one go. Or the guy walking for charity all the way from Boston who tried and failed — only to succeed the very next day. A combination of red secret sauce and melted fat drips from my fingers as I finish half of it.

But staring at the second half, plus all the fries, I know I can gorge myself no longer. I manage only five or six more bites. I box it up with no T-shirt (or glory) to show for my efforts. Hobbled by an expanded stomach, I step outside toward my car. The restaurant door creaks shut behind me, and the gravel parking lot crunches beneath my boots, and the only other sound for miles is the hiss from the grill. — EB

OWNE R MIC H AE L DINIU S WIT H A MU S H ROOM SWISS B U R G E R — O N E O F T H E MANY GRE ASY OF F E RINGS AT MIDDL E GAT E STAT ION, T H OU GH A FA R S M A LLE R O PTI O N T H AN T H E T RIP L E - DE C K E R “MIDDL E GAT E MO N ST E R .”

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sign still stands, as comforting as the menu.

Each son orders to suit his role — smothered burrito for the rebel, candy-bar French toast for the youngest. I never stray from biscuits and gravy, eggs sunny side up, same as Grandpa would get here after World War II, when Mom was a young girl and they stopped at this same diner.

Grandpa died before I was born, and my sons barely remember my mother. But I always imagine his old Ford pickup parked outside, loaded with the fruit he’d sell along the way to pay for the trip. Mom would ride back there, too, because that’s just how it was, and if the pioneers could do it, so could she. That was her mantra for hard times. She loved California, but her heart was always in Utah; for me, growing up and moving around so much, neither ever felt like home. But here at The Griddle, no matter which way I’m headed, I’m halfway there. — CN

as a kid,

I always knew we were halfway to Utah when we got to The Griddle. The afternoon before, setting off on the annual summer trip from central California to Salt Lake City, where my parents were born and raised, Mom would have the car already packed so we could grab Dad from the office and get right on the road. He’d drive until he couldn’t, and we’d sleep in the car outside of a church in some small town. Then I’d wake to the bone-shaking ruts of Interstate 80, somewhere outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. And every year, we’d stop for breakfast.

That’s what I tell my sons as we park. The old brick-red plywood facing is either gone or never existed, but there’s log-cabin siding now.

The flyscreened patio has been walled in, with skylights in the roof. The old baby-blue neon

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THE RAM 1 SUN VALLEY ROAD SUN VALLEY, IDAHO

THE GRIDDLE 460 W. WINNEMUCCA BLVD. WINNEMUCCA, NEVADA

K RISTIN M URPHY

A F R E N C H DIP SA N DWI CH AND FRI ES AT THE GR IDDLE IN WI NNEMUCCA, NEV.

hall. A waiter places a white, warm plate on the table. Maybe it’s an assortment of Iberico loin, lamb chop, duck sausage and butternut squash accompanied by wild rice, parsnip and blueberry demi-glace — a meal served then and resurrected for today’s visitors. Nothing on the menu indicates the diver scallop bathing in coconut Panang curry existed then, or the ingot-shaped dark chocolate mousse, with a gold leaf and a cigarette-shaped cookie. No reason to hold back, though — surely, Hemingway would approve. — BM

you push the Ram’s heavy wooden doors, ease yourself in this plush, floral-patterned booth and wonder, “Is this where Ernest Hemingway sat?” This upscale restaurant opened its doors in the lodge-studded Sun Valley Village in 1937, a couple of years before the writer started sojourning in central Idaho. On and off until his death in nearby Ketchum in 1961, Hemingway, an accomplished sportsman, fished the state’s trout streams and prowled the alpine wilderness, a rifle in hand.

The Ram, according to local lore, was one of his favorite hangouts. Imagine him bespectacled and wavy-haired, sipping a scotch and soda in a sports jacket. It’s the early 1940s and he’s back from canoeing down the Big Wood River, which snakes a mile and a half to the west; or perhaps from a duck hunting trip. The author trains his almond eyes on the three antler chandeliers hanging from the wood-plank ceiling. His ear catches a jazzy tune coming from the baby grand piano, slightly off to the left of the chalet-like dining

the land was wild when Jack and Fern Morrison arrived in the early 1930s. They sought to tame it. The tunnel through Zion National Park had recently been completed, but the road that would eventually connect Mount Carmel Junction with the park’s eastern edge, some 13 miles away, hadn’t been. Jack knew about roads, having built them while serving in World War I. He knew that, once completed, the intersection of what would become state Route 9 and the already existent U.S. 89 would become a well-traveled trade route. He and Fern decided to homestead right there. In 1940, they opened the Thunderbird Restaurant on their property.

Jack and Fern are long gone, but the land where they once set up shop has become a sprawling complex, home to a Best Western, a Chevron, a nine-hole golf course and an RV park. Their descendants carry on the family tradition, providing lodging, entertainment and, of course, food to travelers on their way to Zion and Bryce.

I visited with my wife on a Friday night. Our waiter, Lloyd, recommended the chicken fettuccine alfredo. “It’s just mac ’n cheese for adults,” he said with a grin before heading back to the kitchen. From our booth, I stared up at a neon bird perched above the original sign — the restaurant’s eponymous red, orange and green mythical fowl welcoming weary travelers. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “The Midnight Special”

LAURA SEITZ

DI NERS ENJ OY THEI R TAKES ON T RADIT IONAL STANDARDS AT TAGGART ’S GRIL L IN MORGAN.

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A summer road trip IN THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST, AND BESIDES THE enviable scenery AT EVERY TURN, THE BEST PARTS ARE THE eating spots IN BETWEEN.

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hummed in the background over the clang of ceramic plates and metal spoons. A baby cooed in a high chair as his mom snapped on his bib. As Lloyd brought out a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie, 82 years echoed throughout the dining room — the din of people drawn to this place for the same reason Jack and Fern once were.

I took one more look out the window, and I could almost hear the warm buzz of neon against night. — EB THUNDERBIRD RESTAURANT 4530 STATE ST. MOUNT CARMEL JUNCTION, UTAH

“dad, is this a real trout?” a man asks his father sitting across the wooden table. In Nora’s Fish Creek Inn’s 40-year existence, it’s a question a hundred sons have undoubtedly asked a hundred fathers. The trout in question is mounted on a timbered lintel spanning the width of the log cabin; it’s a miniature version of the 20-foot fish-shaped sign greeting visitors from the roof. There are more variations throughout the 100-seat diner. Its shape adorns the mausoleum-size fireplace at the back of the room. “Yeah,” the dad says. The trout is real.

The old man seems to know the place like he was born here. “Is Jackie working today?” he asks a waitress. When he suggests that his son’s girlfriend, sitting at the table in a desert-colored beanie, take a look around, she obliges. She walks studiously past the customers seated at two sprawling, wood-paneled lunch counters in the middle of the restaurant. Past the kitchen’s wideopen doors, where cooks prepare Nora’s famous huevos rancheros and banana bread French toast, both of which earned the restaurant the title of “best breakfast in Jackson Hole” five times and a James Beard award in 2012. When she sits back, there’s a wide smile on her face. — BM NORA’S FISH CREEK INN 5600 HIGHWAY 22 WILSON, WYOMING

surrounded by the ponderosa pines, rushing brooks, dewy meadows and abundant wildlife, the high Uintas offer a mountain paradise for campers in search of getting away from, well, everything. The Notch Pub, found on a gray gravel road past a sign reading “Families welcome,” straddles the world between that unspoiled wilderness and a warm bowl of buffalo wings.

The Notch features live music every Saturday night, along with shaggy blue pool tables for folks over 21 and a Deer Hunter video game. A throng of TVs hang above the bar.

Bikers are welcome, and frequent. And an outdoor seating area offers a combination of pine-tinted summer mountain air alongside fumes from the in-house smoker. I order a “beast burger,” because there’s nothing quite like a patty featuring the flesh of four animals — beef, bison, elk and boar — in a single bite.

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” hums along just loud enough to be noticed — reminding me of my obligations back in the city. I scarf down one last bite, my gut pushing up against my belt, and head out. My tires crunch the gray gravel as I take a final look at the triangular, mountain-shaped grey building and know I’ll be back. — EB

family affair, serving housemade comforts in Utah portions. Peacocks strut in the yard outside a converted gas station with log-cabin vibes, among touring motorcyclists and tubing survivors still wet from the rapids.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be served by Melissa, a former accountant whose sister recently sold the place to her niece, who started working here as a teenager. Melissa will guide you through an expansive menu, perhaps starting with jalapeno poppers, oozing cream cheese, elevated by the spicy apricot jelly she made herself (most of the sauces and dressings and all the bread and desserts are made here).

She’ll rave about the pitas — fluffy and so fresh you can smell the grill — that wrap all the sandwiches, including a French dip that riffs on a Philly cheesesteak, dotted with chopped peppers. The same pitas, when seasoned with garlic and parmesan, pair well with a salad of spinach, apples and crispy, flaky salmon.

You’ll be stuffed before Melissa suggests dessert, but don’t miss the carrot cake. She won’t brag about the beefy slab of spiced, nutty richness, covered in a shelf of sugarbomb icing. But as the first bite melts in your mouth, you’ll know why you arrived. — CN TAGGART’S GRILL 1105 TAGGART LANE MORGAN, UTAH

THE NOTCH PUB 2392 E. MIRROR LAKE HIGHWAY SAMAK, UTAH

it was barely 9 a.m. on a Saturday, and all the

forgiven for missing Taggart’s Grill, since all you can see from Interstate 84 is a lawn sign poked into the hillside, but you might not forgive yourself. Hidden in the narrows of Weber Canyon, where the river bends around a granite cliff face, this gem is a true

you could be

pink vinyl booths in Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner were full. Hungry patrons kept pushing through the restaurant door. “Motorcycle riders welcome,” it says on the glass, and from the looks of the parking lot, many of those customers were.

Stacks of buttered toast waited to go out with orders of pancakes and eggs, and a cook pulled a train whistle whenever hot plates started to pile up under heat lamps. Waiters and waitresses swept in, dipping their shoulders to slide by one another without impact and busing abandoned plates in balletic formation.

But at Mr. D’z, housed in a converted 1940s gas station, breakfast isn’t the only meal on offer.

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burrowing into scoops of vanilla ice cream in a hot fudge sundae, a banana split and a float with root beer made in-house. “Stressed spelled backwards is desserts,” a nearby sign seemed to have reminded them.

The menu is prolific, with pages of combinations of burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches and pizza.

There’s chicken-fried steak and fresh pie, meatloaf and chili if somehow you have the willpower to abstain from the golden fried onion rings that Oprah herself ordered on a mid-aughts road trip.

Farther down the bar counter, a woman asked for the check. She was on her way to Texas, and she still had hours to go. But she always stops at the diner when she passes through town, she said. Usually she orders the club sandwich but this time, her fourth time, she went with a burger. “Both are good,” she said, eyeing a platter of French toast dusted in powdered sugar. “I didn’t know they served that.”

Maybe on the next trip. — CO

MR. D’Z 105 EAST ANDY DEVINE AVE.

throes of modern bustle. The main thoroughfare, Commercial Street, is a gauntlet of leather shops and antique stores and boutiques and coffee shops. An evening stroll along the sidewalk elicits a “howdy” from a stranger. In short, it’s the modern West; a town alive with growth and cash and a horizon of possibility.

But inside the Star Hotel, things have hardly changed since the place opened in 1910. The idea then was to provide refuge for Basque herders, many of whom journeyed to the American West in search of better fortunes. The Star offered lodging and food familiar to their isolated Spanish homeland, and still does. Though today, as the region’s premier Basque steakhouse, it provides refuge to pretty much anyone who seeks it.

A mounted steer, cougar and salmon greet you at the bar. White, spotted tablecloths and

THE STAR HOTEL 246 W. SILVER ST. ELKO, NEVADA

KRI STIN MURPH Y

KINGMAN, ARIZONA

outside, downtown elko, Nevada, is in the

family-style seating await in the dining room.

Every meal — whether you’re a party of eight or one — comes with Basque cabbage soup (please, please try the soup), sliced French bread, Basque beans, garbanzo beans, green beans, spaghetti in red sauce, a bowl of croutons and skillet frites.

The steak, should you ask for it (and you should ask for it), arrives with a mound of sliced, sauteed garlic atop its flame-seared crust. In here, biting into a slab of salty, savory beef perfected over a century, there is no outside. There is no bustle. There’s a fork and knife, a meal and an immigrant story. — EB

KATHY AND ALLEN SPURGER E NJOY A FAMILY- ST Y L E ME AL AT T H E STAR H OT E L IN E L KO, NE V.

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KRISTI N MU RPH Y

SHALENE MANNI NG, STAR HOTE L S E RV E R AND K ITC H E N MANAGE R, P OS E S F OR A P ORT RAIT H OL DING BAKED LAMB AND AN ASSOR T ME NT OF S IDE DIS H E S OU TS IDE OF T H E STAR H OT E L IN E L KO, NE V.

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FINDING OUR ROOTS WHY RURAL AMERICA MATTERS

BY GRACE OLMSTEAD ILLUSTRATION BY GREG NEWBOLD

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while in college in Virginia, I started working for the admissions department, giving campus tours to prospective students and their families. on one particular tour, as soon as i said that I had grown up in Idaho, i saw the prospective student’s mother lean toward her husband. “so it does exist,” she whispered with a soft smirk.

When she saw that I had overheard, she blushed and explained. The family’s pastor did not believe Idaho was real. He told them the state was “made up by the federal government,” part of a scheme to get more tax dollars.

“After all,” he would say with a laugh, “who’s ever met someone from Idaho?”

Well, they met me — making this the first (and last) time I’ve smashed a conspiracy theory by my very existence. But that rather strange family stirred something inside me: a growing frustration, I think, over how hard it was to justify a place that nobody knew anything about.

This wasn’t the first time I had experienced cluelessness when my home state came up in conversations. Idaho was a place sparsely populated enough, it seemed, to foster both silly stereotypes and complete ignorance. Sometimes, I just leaned into the stereotypes. When one classmate asked me about Idaho potatoes, I jestingly told her that I grew up in a house surrounded by potato fields, with an outhouse in the backyard and no paved roads for miles. She believed me.

I saw other friends from rural states struggle with this: The incredulity we all felt when Iowa, Ohio and Idaho morphed into a featureless blob in the imaginations of our peers. The names are similar, in their defense. But sometimes it felt as if places with farmers and cows and corn were all the same to people who hadn’t lived there. The few folks I talked to who had traveled through Idaho on road trips told me how surprised they were to discover its beauty. I was not sure what they expected — 83,600 square miles of brown fields, perhaps?

Us rural kids adapted pretty quickly. We got used to telling or hearing jokes about our hometowns, embraced the derision and amusement of people who were cool enough to come from places like Chicago or Los Angeles. One of my friends said she was from the “Middle of Nowhere, Indiana” for so long, it took me years to learn the 68

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name of her actual hometown.

Later, at happy hours, banquets and lunches in Washington, D.C., I was often introduced as the person from Idaho, the person whose grandfathers were farmers. The novelty of my farming roots made little sense to me at first. Now, however, I know that less than 2 percent of Americans work on a farm these days. Very few of us still have direct ties to the land and to those who work it. My childhood in rural Idaho gave me a connection to the land and to our food system that many folks in D.C. had not experienced.

In one sense, this ignorance was harmless. In another sense, it was indicative of a political and economic system that judges places not by how well they serve their own inhabitants, or by the culture and people they keep in place, but by their profit and utility.

Some cities may be exceptions — places like New York City, which are so iconic in their own right they’re viewed as intrinsically valuable.

But many rural towns are considered interchangeable and expendable, valuable not for their own sake but because their resources — lumber, paper, coal, minerals, gemstones, oil, gas, produce, dairy, meat and grains, to name a few — have for many decades been exported to other places by large corporations. These towns’ worth (or lack thereof ) is contingent on what other spaces think of them, take from them or offer them. This extraction of worth, hope and resources is something farmer and essayist Wendell Berry and economist John Ikerd have both referred to as the economic colonization of rural America.

“Irreplaceable precious rural resources, including rural people and cultures, are being exploited — not to benefit rural people but to increase the wealth of corporate investors,” Ikerd writes. He sees industrial agriculture as a primary means of rural America’s colonization: It is extractive and emphasizes profit over long-term health.

On the East Coast, I began to see that extractive mentality clearly for the first time. It often flourishes through ignorance or apathy

toward the places that produce our food — an ignorance that can even result in contempt. As Sarah Smarsh writes in her memoir, “Heartland,” “I rarely saw the place I called home described or tended to in political discourse, the news media, or popular culture as anything but a stereotype or something that happened a hundred years ago.” It’s easy to exploit places we don’t know, places we believe to be unimportant.

It’s easy to think the soil can last forever if you know nothing of it. But extraction of value at the expense of the land and its people destroys both the “nowheres” and the “somewheres,” if you give it time.

Roots absorb water and nutrients from the soil.

They anchor and support the plants we see aboveground. But roots also are essential to the well-being of the soil itself — part of an intricate, living system we often ignore, because it’s beneath our feet.

Good soil is teeming with life: It is home to a multitude of living organisms both large and small, such as bacteria, protozoa, worms, mites, insects, millipedes, centipedes, spiders, slugs and snails. In healthy soil, there are more organisms underneath the ground than above it. Most of these life forms live on plant roots and decaying matter: If there is no humus (decaying organic matter) in the soil, then these microorganisms will struggle.

The symbiotic relationship between roots and fungi is called mycorrhizae. “Mycorrhizal fungi live in and extend from root tissue, bringing nutrients and water to the host plant, suppressing weed growth near it, binding the nearby soil into aggregates that hold water, and probably dozens of other activities we don’t understand,” Stephanie Anderson writes in the book “One Size Fits None.” “Soil is one of the most complex substances on Earth, if not the most complex. Humans understand

only a tiny fraction of what’s actually going on underground, but we do know that billions of microorganisms work together to make soil a living substance.”

The area surrounding a plant’s roots is known as the rhizosphere, and in this zone, the plant makes compounds that serve as “a veritable cocktail or ‘buffet’ of resources for anything in the rhizosphere,” according to University of Aberdeen researcher Paul Hallett. Roots, exudates and microorganisms hold the soil together. They serve as indispensable building blocks in our earth. Soil aggregates — both macro and micro-aggregates — form “microbial villages” that share nutrients, store carbon and lend health and vigor to the land we observe aboveground. Every time we tear roots out of the soil, we threaten the networks that provide structure and life to this plot of earth. We don’t just affect the past or present life of the soil — we harm its future as well. Healthy roots need healthy soil in order to flourish, but healthy soil is also dependent on the roots that have existed in it throughout generations past and present.

This is the wondrous, mysterious life of soil that farmers in centuries past did not understand when they tore out grasses and sagebrush and plowed up the earth. We are only beginning to understand the degree to which our health is tied to that of our soil — to the communities of microbes that bring wholeness and health to our food, and therefore to us. It’s a reality we are increasingly cognizant of and seeking to understand better.

At a meeting of the Idaho Environmental Forum some years ago, state agronomist Marlon Winger declared that the battle for agricultural survival must start “up there on the naked soil”: the soil depleted and abandoned. Instability has long been part and parcel of life in this landscape, and it has resulted in an eroded landscape: a land decimated by rootlessness, left bare of fruit and life. No-till farming and the use of “cover crops” — providing the soil with constant ground cover and JUNE 2022

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IT’S EASY TO EXPLOIT PLACES WE DON’T KNOW, PLACES WE BELIEVE TO BE UNIMPORTANT. IT’S EASY TO THINK THE SOIL CAN LAST FOREVER IF YOU KNOW NOTHING OF IT.

root protection by planting diverse, soil-replenishing crops on off years — are efforts aimed at combating this depletion. But many farmers and conservationists worry that no-till farming is not enough. Wes Jackson, co-founder of the Land Institute, has warned that no-till farming still requires herbicide usage and perpetuates the growth of annuals over perennials. Jackson applauds the sustainable agriculture movement and its emphasis on the local production and consumption of fruits and vegetables, but he believes that a truly regenerative system needs to include our cereal production: the wheat and corn from which we get about a quarter of our calories on average.

“Soon people will realize that annuals are poor managers of soil nutrients and water, and that agriculture will need to turn to perennials to better manage those resources,” Jackson told The Sun in a 2010 interview.

Jackson and his companions at the Land Institute are seeking to fix these ills by developing perennial hybrid grains called polycultures, which result from crossing annual grains with their wild perennial relatives. These perennial crops would grow back season after season without farmers ever having to till or plow the soil — thus resulting in deep-rooted, soil-nourishing crops. Jackson calls this “natural-systems agriculture” and hopes it might replace our current system, which invests only 20 percent of acreage in the growth of perennials. But much depends on the powerful voices of our age and whether people decide to listen this time around: to preserve life in the soil, rather than tearing it up by the roots.

As Ikerd has noted, as we’ve built up fewer, larger and more specialized farms, and decreased both local markets and locally purchased inputs, “many rural communities seem to have lost their purpose.” Small farm towns are increasingly seen as “middle of nowheres,” practically nonexistent in the eyes of the larger world.

We’ve undervalued the degree to which those small, connected farms mattered: How the bonds of life they cultivated in their lifetime were thick and nourishing, how the virtues they fostered mattered for communal health. Small farmers built a culture in Emmett, Idaho — a shared set of beliefs, values, goals and practices — that emphasized stewardship, neighborliness, voluntarism and responsibility. The farmers that undergirded this community worked hard to build job opportunities for the kids who grew up there, and did their best to keep health in the soil.

These days, however, highly educated Americans cluster in “winner-take-all cities” such as Los Angeles, New York City or

Chicago, according to Richard Florida, and “Americans with less education are often either left behind in stagnant economies or pushed out of expensive, dynamic cities,” according to a 2019 Congressional Joint Economic Committee Republicans report.

It is not difficult to see how dangerous this situation could be for our rural communities. Places that used to be healthy have grown frail.

Many rural communities are increasingly empty of people and of hope.

But for some reason, instead of seeing an outpouring of alarm or concern over these developments, advocates for rural America have met with a growing amount of pushback and disdain. Maria Kefalas told me in a phone interview that she remembers her publisher asking her, as she was co-writing her book “Hollowing Out the Middle,” “So what if rural America dies?” Nobody she knew cared about “flyover country,” the rural stretches of America where little exciting or meaningful activity seemed to happen.

In an interview with Robert Wuthnow, author of “The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America,” Vox reporter Sean Illing suggested that rural America is not a place where people have been left behind, but rather a place where people have “chosen not to keep up.” Any difficulties country folk were experiencing in our time, he seemed to suggest, were their own fault.

Illing’s suggestion that rural people have “chosen not to keep up” fits perfectly with the transitory language of success in our culture: The fact that mobility is equated with success and rootedness with failure.

But he’s wrong, too, because Emmett’s farmers and townspeople have tried to keep up over time. There have always been efforts to follow the latest fad, to embrace the latest boom or to listen to the advice of the current agricultural experts. Some of these efforts may have had a good impact on the town. But a lot of them ended in busts, depletion and bankruptcy. Emmett has suffered not because it didn’t keep up — but because it did.

Farm towns have now experienced countless cycles of conquest and depletion, boom and bust. Timber and riverbed, flora and fauna have experienced patterns of overuse and exhaustion. The constant waves of exodus bleed nourishment from the soil, eroding the ground they leave behind.

Sir Albert Howard, a turn-of-the-century botanist who studied sustainable agriculture in India, suggested that soil regenerates through a life cycle of death, decay and regrowth. To cultivate health, we must be investing as much (or more) fertility in the earth as we take from it.

If we instead deplete the ground’s resources, future generations pay the price. I fear that as those of us who grew up in the soil of our small farm towns leave, we remove the material that should have remained, that would have resulted in hope and nourishment for the next generation.

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OUR OWN EFFORTS AT LIVING WELL IN PLACE WILL BE IMPERFECT. BUT LOVE SUGGESTS THAT WE OUGHT TO KEEP TRYING ANYWAY: TO KEEP SOWING SEEDS OF SERVICE AND GENEROSITY IN THE LANDS WE LOVE.

The good news is that, despite the damage caused by boomers, there is hope, thanks to the stickers who have stayed and who give back to the soil, both literally and metaphorically.

Wherever we decide to live, we must learn to stick: Choosing to invest ourselves in place, to love our neighbors, to leave our soil a little healthier than it was when we arrived. Every place will be imperfect.

Our own efforts at living well in place will be imperfect. But love suggests that we ought to keep trying anyway: to keep sowing seeds of service and generosity in the lands we love.

To choose rootedness, we must acknowledge the fact that, as Simone Weil points out, a desire for profit, unless tempered by other goods and goals, tends to destroy human roots. We have to seek out larger goals than financial fulfillment, than reaching that next rung on the social or economic ladder. We have to consider whether the perfect career or paycheck will offer us the fulfillment or happiness we lack — or whether the cost of transience is, in fact, too high a cost. It is true that providing for ourselves and our families and having solid employment are fundamental considerations. But we must also remember that they are not the only questions or goals worth considering.

If you are conservative, you may have to reckon with the fact that, as Robert Nisbet argues, capitalism is especially prone to fostering a vision of the autonomous, rootless individual. Capitalism’s “great, impersonal system” sees humans “not as members of society but as individual units of energy and production,” Nisbet argues. And while that means we have built a lot of wealth over the course of our history, it also means we have ignored deeper spiritual and communal needs, breaking down social capital along the way.

On the other hand, if you are progressive, you may have to reckon with the fact that individualism and self-actualization are not enough to foster happiness and well-being. The federal government is not enough, on its own, to meet the needs of its citizens. Humans crave membership within localities and associations — and rather than building a cultural or political environment that would foster this sort of belonging, we’ve done the opposite. As Christine Emba wrote in 2018 for The Washington Post, liberalism “has scoured anything that could hold stable meaning and connection from our modern landscape — culture has been disintegrated, family bonds devalued, connections to the past cut off, an understanding of the common good all but disappeared.”

By encouraging social mobility and ignoring the importance of rootedness, both left and right have destroyed the very environment their voters depend upon for happiness and well-being. Many cities and towns have felt the aftereffects. Florida, Patrick Carr and Kefalas have identified two groups besides the “mobile” and “stuck” who have a beneficial impact on their places: The “rooted,” who “have the resources to 72

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move, but prefer to stay where they are,” and the “returners,” who build up financial capital elsewhere but then return and invest that capital in their home communities. Both these groups could do (and, indeed, have done) a lot to strengthen their places.

Perhaps we can be the rooted: Those who encourage our employees, co-workers, friends or neighbors to be rooted as well, by seeking to foster health and profit within place (rather than leaving place behind).

There are several such stories of community service and investment I have observed within my Idaho community — stories of mom-andpop businesses that grow but never leave. Even small efforts aimed at reinvigorating place — volunteering, going to town council meetings or cleaning up trash on the sidewalk — can serve to encourage rootedness in those around us. For those of us who have left home behind, perhaps we can offer the hope of a “returner”: One of those community members who will be key, in many areas of America, to rebuilding social fabric and economic opportunity.

Perhaps we hesitate to make such decisions because we fear “settling.” We see going home, or even settling in one place long term, as failure. We fear such rootedness might reveal that we do not have what it takes — even if we are unsure what it is that we are supposed to have, or where it is we aim to go. We are used to a culture that constantly urges us to “make a mark on the world,” to turn ourselves into powerful influencers or world changers of one sort or another. We want to be somebodies and fear becoming nobodies.

Yet as James Rebanks writes in his book “The Shepherd’s Life,” “Landscapes like ours were created by and survive through the efforts of nobodies.” I still go back to the graveyard whenever I can on my visits home, with flowers under my arm. I plant my feet in a graveyard full of names I do not recognize, along with the few I know and love, and consider what their presence here, their silent membership, represents.

Sometimes, I wonder: Where will I be buried? Does it matter what soil my body is planted in, after I’m gone?

Perhaps it’s a pointless question. But maybe there’s something to be said for the bodies that remain in place, long after they have lived and loved there, staying faithful to the ground they once cared for. Perhaps these graves will testify to something important, long after I or any other visiting relative is gone. These bodies may rest in unremembered graves — but our lives will still be the better for their faithfulness.

I stand here with the dead because I believe they matter. This land matters. And all the roots that sink down deep into this ground, lending strength and life to this soil, will matter long after any of us are gone. No matter how the world determines worth, we must remember and reverence the nobodies who are truly somebodies.

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CULTURE

DUST IN THE PAGES HOW A BOOKSTORE IN THE DESERT SHAPED WESTERN LITERATURE

BY H E ATH E R H A N S MA N

I

t was at least a mile down a dirt road at the far side of Arches National Park to the site of Edward Abbey’s memorial service on May 20, 1989. But for many of the 500 people in attendance, it didn’t matter what it took to get there — the spirit of Abbey, the acclaimed (and controversial) author, demanded their presence. Montana-based writer Rick Bass had hitchhiked after his rental car ran out of gas. Author and veteran Doug Peacock showed up late, sneaking in quietly because he was on the lam, running from the FBI. The service started with readings and got rowdier from there. The details of what went down that night have been clouded, but after the dust cleared from the celebration, the rebellious literati of the American West had come up with a plan for the best way to solidify Abbey’s memory.

A bookstore.

Moab, Utah, needed a bookstore — a reliable place to buy books in the desert, as well as a memorial to Abbey’s legacy and the canon that he’d created. A place dedicated to the rangy deserts of the Colorado Plateau, the unruly writing about environmental issues and the way the West is changing. They decided they needed to start that, because, as Abbey once wrote, “Freedom begins between the ears.”

So they did. By February ’90, a measured nine months later (which was no coincidence, 74

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I’m sure), bookseller Jose Knighton, who had been selling books in Salt Lake City, had wrangled funders and opened the doors on Back of Beyond Books, a dusty desert bookshop dedicated to writing about the West.

In the three decades since, in a world where independent bookstores have had to fight consolidation, algorithmic culture flattening and the creep of placeless online retail, Back

CAN A BOOKSTORE DEVOTED TO WRITING ABOUT THE WEST HOLD ON IN A CHANGING WEST?

of Beyond has carried on and thrived. It’s an example of how a local literary groove can be a part of a community.

“It actually hasn’t changed much, even though Moab has changed,” says writer Brooke Williams, who was part of the revelry at Abbey’s wake. In the crowded strip of Moab’s main drag, it sits between T-shirt shops and tchotchke stores. Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” is

still the store’s number one seller, although, as a sign of change, Amy Irvine’s recent rejoinder, “Desert Cabal,” and guides to the increasingly popular ORV routes trail close behind.

“It’s like a time capsule of the West,” Irvine says. “Both the myth of the West and the reality of the West. They do a remarkable job of dancing down the line.”

Writers like Williams credit Back of Beyond’s owner, Andy Nettell (who has owned the shop since 2004) and his employees with holding on to the community fixture — and with holding the line on the creep of Amazon by fervently supporting local readers and writers.

But change could be coming. The bookstore is for sale.

This change in ownership raises some big questions about the future: Can a bookstore devoted to writing about the West hold on in a changing West? And can the magic of a local bookshop sustain itself when so much of what we read and write and buy and think about today happens online?

B OOKSTORE S WORK in funny, nonlinear ways.

In 1993, writer Craig Childs was on his way into Canyonlands for a season when he stopped into Back of Beyond looking for a notebook to take with him. “The shop is right in the middle of my home landscape and that’s where I first held that journal in my hands,” he says.

ANDY NETTELL, THE OWNER OF B AC K OF B E YOND B OOKSTORE S INC E 2 0 0 4, B E GAN WORK ING PART TI ME AT THE LOCAL MOAB BOOKSTORE WH IL E H E WAS A RANGE R AT NE ARBY ARC H E S NAT IONAL PAR K .

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY S PE N S E R H E A PS

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“I THINK COMMUNITIES NEED A COUPLE OF THINGS TO KEEP THEM WHOLE. THEY NEED A GOOD SCHOOL SYSTEM, A NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL OPTIONS, AND LITERATURE AND THE ARTS. I’M BIASED, BUT I THINK A TOWN HAS NO SOUL WITHOUT IT.”

That journal, a leather-bound Oberon, became the bones of his first book, “Stone Desert,” which kicked off three decades of writing about the natural world. “I realize that’s where book writing started for me,” he says. “If I hadn’t bought that journal for that winter in Canyonlands, I might not have written that first book, and then I may not have written a second book. Buying something from that place and taking it out into the world — it meant something different coming from there.”

This year, Torrey House Press is reissuing “Stone Desert” in an updated format that includes Childs’ sketches and portions of that initial journal. Nettell was the one who convinced Torrey to republish it. He saw how it was important in the canon of Western writing and how it carried on what Back of Beyond is always trying to do: to champion the weird, rebellious, overlooked stories about Utah and the western U.S. There’s a sense of exploration when you

walk into the shop. There’s a requisite stack of Abbey’s books near the front, but as you wander the shelves, toward the piles of old maps toward the back, you can page through obscure archeology books, adventure narratives and Native poetry.

Nettell says that a sense of curation is the hard and the fun part of stocking a bookstore.

It’s the real work of creating a space that functions as a community hub of education and culture. He says he tells his employees (many of whom are also artists or other creatives) that it’s their job to be both selective and diverse. They can’t pack everything into the shop, so they have to decide what’s worthy.

“I think it matters that there’s another person behind it. It feels like someone is asking the same questions about the landscapes that I’m asking,” says Childs, who also says that a lot of his Colorado Plateau research books for his archaeological travelogue “House of Rain” came from Back of Beyond.

THE SHELVES AT BAC K OF B E YOND ARE F IL L E D WIT H E V E RY T H ING F ROM XERI SCAPI NG GUI DES TO NAT IV E AME RIC AN P OE T RY AND NAT U RAL H ISTORY B OOKS .

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Nettell started working at the bookstore part time when he was a ranger in Arches National Park, and he’s been involved since the beginning. In 2001, he opened Arches Book Company, a more traditional bookstore selling fiction and other wide-ranging writing across the street. In 2004, when Back of Beyond went up for sale, he bought it, too, and he ran them both until the 2008 recession, when he combined the two into Back of Beyond’s space.

He’s worked to navigate the perilous world of bookselling in an increasingly digital world by being regionally specific and bringing in rare volumes, while also trying to curate novels and books that might appeal to people on vacation. He’s had to grow, while also trying to hold onto the regionalism, and focus on the natural world that Back of Beyond has always had.

“We search high and low for regional titles,” he says. That might be a one-off from a guy who wants to put out a book on pottery design of the Southwest. Back of Beyond will probably be the only store that sells that book. The store has every flower guidebook that could conceivably sell for the Colorado Plateau, including the very unglamorous “Weeds of the West,” which sells for a whopping $125. “We may only sell a few of them a year, but it’s critical to represent them.”

They’re not just selling obscure books at Back of Beyond. They’re also helping to get them published by supporting local and regional writers.

Irvine says Nettell had no idea who she was when she stepped into the store and asked if he might read a draft of the book that became her memoir “Trespass,” which intertwines her personal and family history with Utah’s religious and natural history. She wanted a reader who would understand the background material, and she thought Nettell — who she says looked exhausted by another wannabe writer showing up with a manuscript — might be able to check her facts. She got much more than that.

“A few weeks later he called me, and he said, ‘Come in, I just loved this book, how can I support you?’” she says. “And the next thing I know he had found my great-great-grandfather’s diary online and bought it for me. It changed my whole life.”

That dedication and desire to go beyond the norm of bookselling seeps out beyond the writing community to the readers in town and folks who are passing through. The goal is to use reading as a tool for open communication and learning. “We’re going to provide any

book that anyone wants,” he says. “We try not to make any judgment for anyone who comes in the store, we just want to get any books in their hands.”

That’s not to say it hasn’t been without controversy. For instance, when Irvine released “Desert Cabal,” a rejoinder to “Desert Solitaire” on the 50th anniversary of its initial publication, there was blowback from both Western writers — including folks like Peacock — and from readers who didn’t like her criticism of Abbey’s approach to conservation (which was notably devoid of empathy), and his harsh words against ethnic groups and women, and rigid perspective on who deserved to enjoy the wilderness.

The reaction was heated, but Back of Beyond continued to promote and support the book because it thought it was an important part of the conversation about land use, access and accountability. Nettell says he thought it was important to stand by the book when it was under fire, because it was under fire. It underscored the point that the perspective was necessary. “In the end, that little book personifies what a bookstore should be — creating conversation,” he says. “We got a lot of grief, and Amy got a lot of angry letters, but we’ve also sold thousands of copies of that little book.”

TOP : IN 2 0 01 , ANDY NE T T E L L OP E NE D ARC H E S B OOK COMPA N Y, A MORE T RADIT IONAL B OOKSTORE S E L L ING F IC T ION. IN 2 0 0 4, WH E N B AC K OF B E YON D WE NT U P F OR SAL E , H E B OU GH T IT, TOO, AND H AS RU N T H E S H OP E V E R S INC E .

B OT TOM: A P IC T U RE OF RE NOWNE D AU T H O R E DWARD AB B E Y S ITS O N T H E AU T H OR’S WRIT IN G DE S K INS IDE B AC K OF B E YOND B OOKS IN MOAB .

SO WH AT C AN A B OOKSTORE B E for people, and for a place? Not every small bookstore has a Nettell, or a rarefied canon of local writing.

But at their best, independent bookstores can encourage tough conversations, and create a touchpoint for writers and the communities they inhabit. “Independent books stores are what I really thrive off of as a writer,” Childs says. “An independent bookstore is kind of a hub — not just literary, but also social — and for writers it’s twice as much.”

A 2020 working paper from the Harvard Business School found that some independent bookstores were able to fight the Amazonification of retail and the die-off of brick-andmortar stores by offering three things online retailers couldn’t: community, curation and space for convening. “In the context of retail, seismic shifts are affecting the way consumers engage with online, big-box and local retailers.

Independent bookstores provide a story of hope for community-led businesses,” the paper’s author, Ryan Raffelli, writes.

That’s ideally what Back of Beyond, and other local bookstores, can do. They can be both economic engines and incubators for ideas. But that doesn’t mean they’re not fragile

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THE N A ME BACK OF BEYOND COMES FROM E DWARD AB B E Y 'S MOST NOTORIOU S NOV E L — “T H E MONK E Y WRE NC H G A N G .”

IN THE BOOK, THE CHARACTER SELDOM S E E N S MIT H IS E MP LOY E D BY AN OU T F IT T E R OF T H E SAME NAME .

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L E F T: T H E S H E LV E S OF B AC K OF B E YOND H OL D RARE AND B E LOV E D B OOKS , MOST LY WRIT T E N BY WE ST E RN U.S . AU T H O R S L IK E T E RRY T E MP E ST WIL L IAMS AND WAL L AC E ST E GNE R.

or hard to run — especially in rural or transient communities like Moab. And it doesn’t mean it’s not hard work. According to the Harvard study, booksellers are also facing thin margins, rising rent costs and increasing wages in the face of inflation.

Nettell says he’s not leaving because of money — the store actually had its best sales year ever in 2021. But the battle to achieve those levels of sales and the dedication to the community and its writers has taken a tireless amount of work. In the transition, he’s worried about how — or if — that’s going to carry on. “If we’re going to call this a love story, small businesses need more love and support,” he says.

The hidden costs of losing small local businesses like bookstores can be seen through environmental (shipping and big-box footprints) and economic perspectives (buying and selling within a municipal economy) — but there’s also the cultural values these entities provide.

To Nettell, this would be the greatest loss of all.

“I think communities need a couple of things to keep them whole,” he says. “They need a good school system, a network of spiritual options and I think literature and the arts are kind of the third leg of a foundation. I’m biased, but I think a town has no soul without it.”

He hopes the incoming new owner, former Moab city manager David Everitt (whom he’s

known since the mid-’90s), will hold on to that soul and carry on the decadeslong literary tradition he’s been shepherding. With a new owner things will change — and change is often a bumpy ride — but the hope remains that the evolution will be good.

Back of Beyond, in its microcosm of Moab, frames a larger example of how connecting to a place can show us how to live in the wider world. Hopefully it — and other small businesses like it — can continue to do so. “I’d like to think that the way it’s been built is sturdy enough to endure because we need to continue to be able to see things critically,” Irvine says.

“It’s a place that teaches us, through books, how we keep a civil society.”

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IDEAS

CODE RED AMERICA’S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM HAS LONG BEEN BROKEN. IS IT TOO LATE TO FIX IT?

BY DAV I D M U H L E STE I N A N D M I K E L E AV I TT

B

y some accounts, America’s health care system has been wildly successful. Innovative breakthroughs have transformed care around the world. As an industry, it dominates the country in terms of employment and income. But that success, decades in the making, hasn’t necessarily made Americans healthier than people in other developed nations, and now it threatens to knock the United States off its perch as the world’s economic powerhouse.

The high cost of health care that has fueled the industry’s growth accounts for about 17 percent of the nation’s total goods and services — or $4 trillion — and gobbles up more than 30 percent of federal government spending.

That outsized impact on the U.S. economy has cost consumers financially and has limited government and the private sector from investing in other areas that could help the country maintain its economic position in the world. In percentage terms, it wouldn’t take much to shrink health care’s share of the gross domestic product. Reducing it to 12 percent by the year 2050 could free up $1.3 trillion in present dollars annually for investment elsewhere.

But slowing the momentum of 40 years of rising health care costs won’t come easily, and it will require public and private players patiently working on solutions. While a lot is at stake domestically and internationally if these changes in the system don’t occur, panicking and moving too fast would also be a mistake.

Instead, we need to reframe the conversation 80

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from election-cycle policies to generational policies with a long-term focus on decreasing costs by changing current health care business models to prioritize patients’ needs over maximizing capacity in profitable procedures.

HEALT H C ARE S P E NDING for individuals, employers and government has more than tripled from the 1960s through 2019 as a percent of GDP, which is the sum of all goods and ser-

WE NEED TO REFRAME THE CONVERSATION FROM ELECTION-CYCLE POLICIES TO GENERATIONAL POLICIES FOCUSED ON DECREASING COSTS.

vices produced in a year. It has grown nearly five times faster as a percent of federal spending and now represents more than a third of total government spending.

No other country comes close to the United States in that kind of spending on health care. Take China, the world’s fastest-growing economy and biggest threat to the United States’ dominance in the global economy. According to the latest World Bank figures, the U.S. spent 17 percent of its GDP on health care while China spent just 5.4 percent.

The higher spending on health care is not

inherently wrong, but the challenge is in the tradeoffs — what are we, as a country, not investing in because of our increased spending on health care? For example, based on the size of its economy and lower spending on health care, China can spend nearly $1.7 trillion more each year relative to the United States in areas such as education, infrastructure, research and development, overseas development, military, lower taxes and increased savings. We believe that the excess spending on health care puts the United States at an economic disadvantage in world markets and international influence and that reducing its cost is key to the ongoing stature of the United States.

But are Americans healthier than those living in other countries where health care costs less and is more underutilized? Studies suggest not. While China does not approach its health care systems or economy (or countless other things) in the same way as the United States, its approach has been successful at growing its economy and international relevance. China’s economy has grown two to three times faster than the United States’ in the past decade.

Most in the United States would not want to adopt China’s health care system, but a comparison in health outcomes is instructive when we consider how much is too much when it comes to spending. For example, China’s life expectancy at birth now nearly matches the United States, and its healthy life expectancy is greater than what’s experienced in the United States, suggesting that China’s approach to health care is at least adequate. In the ongoing

global race for economic influence, the United States is trying to maintain its lead with a significant metaphorical health care weight around its neck.

T HE G R OWTH IN health care took decades to occur. From 1980 to 2019, health care grew from 9 percent of GDP to 17 percent. Reversing this trend will take commitment, significant time and patience. As a country, we need to make a generational goal for how much we spend on health care. The benchmark we chose is 12 percent or less of GDP spent on health care by the year 2050. In present dollars, this would free up $1.2 trillion annually to invest elsewhere.

ILLU STR ATION BY DAV E PLU N K E RT

The high growth in federal government spending and the inflationary pressure that imposes on the economy would suggest Congress has strong incentives to act. Beyond health care spending representing more than 30 percent of the current federal budget, the Medicare trust fund is expected to be exhausted by 2026 and has significant unfunded obligations.

For example, to cover those obligations over the next 75 years, Medicare would need either an additional $45.7 trillion to the trust fund now, immediately increase payroll taxes by 26 percent or decrease Medicare spending by 16 percent. The magnitude and timing of this suggest that Congress should act.

But Congress has special interests

pressuring elected officials how to act. They include employers, beneficiaries and government contractors, such as hospitals and physicians, long-term care facilities and medical equipment suppliers. The size and clout of those constituencies resulted from the remarkable growth in health care during the past 30 years. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care was the third-largest industry by employment behind manufacturing and retail in 1990. By 2020, it had grown 95 percent while retail only grew by 10 percent and manufacturing dropped 32 percent. Beyond being the largest industry in the country — both in terms of employees and income — it is also the largest single employer JUNE 2022

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in 47 of the 50 states.

That kind of economic success puts Congress in a difficult bind of addressing budgetary challenges caused by health care while not wanting to hurt the economic growth that health care has generated. This dynamic has led to continued congressional gridlock around health care. And with the short-term focus of Congress and election cycles, it is unlikely to be able to find consensus around generational policies.

G OV E R N M E N TS A R E N OT the only actors that are concerned about and could address the rising costs of health care. Employers continue to see significant increases in costs (employer-sponsored family coverage now averages more than $21,000 per year). In one survey, over 80 percent of physicians, patients and employers thought health care spending was too high.

A critical — and often overlooked — barrier to lowering costs is the traditional business model of health care. Most business models consider the value offered to the customer to determine the profit formula, which then sets requirements about what resources and processes need to be in place to make that happen.

But in health care, the real customer is not always apparent. It could be individual patients receiving care. Or, the physicians who work at the hospitals. Insurers acknowledge that they are primarily selling to employers, not the individuals. This results in the value that a customer receives differing from the value that the patient receives.

The core profit formula in health care has been fee-for-service, which is based on the idea of treating people who are sick with the expectation of healing them. This worked well in the first half of the 20th century when most medical care was transactional, and it was adopted by Medicare in 1965. Since that time, available medical care has significantly expanded; people live longer and have more chronic conditions. Much of care is no longer procedure- or transaction-based, and many patients will never fully recover from their illness but may live with them for decades to come.

Under a fee-for-service system, today’s health care delivery system optimizes revenue by identifying highly reimbursed services, increasing capacity to fulfill those services and then filling that capacity. That’s why we’ve seen significant growth of specialty hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and hospital

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expansion, all which drive well-reimbursed capacity. Many believe this system incentivizes unnecessary procedures as opposed to managing care. Ultimately, the value determined by a fee-for-service system is treating people when they get sick, not preventing or eliminating illness.

An alternative business model would focus on patient needs. Under this approach, rather than starting with what’s well-compensated, providers build services and offerings around patient needs and prevent high-cost care. This model is not reliant on billing codes, office visits, acute illnesses or many of the other requirements of the capacity-focused business model. models is incredibly difficult.

The challenges the industry and government face are not unlike a family deciding what to do with their home after finding it no

BUT CH ANGING B U S INE SS

THE HIGHER SPENDING ON HEALTH CARE IS NOT INHERENTLY WRONG, BUT THE CHALLENGE IS IN THE TRADEOFFS — WHAT ARE WE NOT INVESTING IN BECAUSE OF OUR INCREASED SPENDING ON HEALTH CARE?

longer meets the needs of their growing family. They can either repair obvious problems, remodel the existing structure or tear it down and rebuild.

In health care, we can try to repair what’s broken (increase price transparency, eliminate surprise medical bills, build new tech platforms or medical devices, increase supply chain efficiency, etc.), remodel (drive providers to change their business models toward a patient-needs approach), or rebuild (build new organizations from the ground up that have a different model for delivering care.)

None of these three options — repair, remodel or rebuild — are very attractive in the short term. Repairing does not fix the underlying issues; remodeling is uncomfortable, difficult and may not be successful; and rebuilding has yet to offer a true replacement for the system we have today. As a country, though, we are not required (and are likely unable) to

solve this problem in the short term. The calculus changes significantly when you approach this as a generational strategy to change health care.

Such a strategy requires the following: a clear goal. Transforming the health care system requires us to begin with the end in mind, with our “end” being health care representing 12 percent or less of GDP. While there will never be unanimity around any health care policy, getting buy-in from key stakeholders is critical. Those stakeholders are patients and taxpayers. Those with vested interests in the current system are also patients and taxpayers and need to address this issue from that perspective. repair, remodel and rebuild. There will always be problems to fix, but repairing alone won’t get us to our goal. Some organizations will be able to remodel while operating under the current fee-for-service system. But, ultimately, we cannot successfully reduce costs without rebuilding under a new model that adequately addresses the needs of the people at a lower price. government and private action. A generational transformation is never exclusively under the domain of government or industry.

We imagine that much of the lower-cost business models will be developed by the private sector, but government policies can encourage the experimentation and broader adoption of successful models. creative destruction. When new models are developed, there will be organizations that are able to remodel and compete, and others that will go out of business. Major institutions today may not exist in a generation.

While this change would be disruptive for communities, investors, employees and others if done too quickly, over time it will be more gradual and acceptable. patience. Fixing the health care cost issues of past generations will take significant time and effort. While there will always be a tendency to want to look at short-term impacts, we need to focus on the long-term changes and impacts. To achieve this, we will need to be patient through our failures and cautious about any short-term successes. Rebuilding the health care system to lower its cost is doable, and the time to start is now. The nation’s economic future depends on it.

M I K E L E AV I T T, F O R M E R U TA H G OV E R N O R A N D U. S. S E C R ETA RY O F H E A LT H A N D H U M A N S E RV I C E S, I S F O U N D E R O F L E AV I T T PA RT N E R S. D AV I D M U H L E S T E I N I S A H E A LT H C A R E R E S E A R C H E R A N D S T RAT E GY C O N S U LTA N T AT H E A LT H M A NAG E M E N T AS S O C I AT E S.

ROUGHING IT, DELUXE CO NTINU ED F R OM PAG E 5 5

with an added bonus. Bison are so big they seem like an American version of an elephant or a giraffe, allowing Vermejo to be marketed as a sort of American savannah nature preserve.

We go to bed early because I have a big day of fishing ahead. I have already learned, by email, that ice fishing isn’t going to work out. Recent temperatures have been just high enough that the ice will no longer hold us.

This is ironic, since, when I wake up, the temperature on this March morning is 27 degrees and there’s snow on the ground.

I meet my guide, Kevin, at 8 a.m. — an hour earlier than he normally starts, but I want to get the fullest day possible of fishing in. As we drive to one of the 19 fishable lakes on the property, Kevin explains he is from Colorado where he guided before getting a full-time job at Vermejo five years ago.

There are two kinds of fishing guides: the strong, silent types and the yakkers who fill every quiet moment with fish-shtick. Kevin is largely quiet.

There’s an eerie haze over the lake when we arrive, the rising sun fighting a losing battle with layers and layers of low gray clouds and rising mist. There’s nothing fancy about the fishing gear. Two spinning rods, two fly rods, basic green metal three-seater flat-bottom fishing boat.

By 9 a.m. we’re silently motoring across the water, freezing under five layers of clothing, but warmed by the hope that a fish will rise.

Within a few minutes, one does. I reel it in, and we discover it’s not only small but a little peculiar — part of its nose appears to be missing, from birth defect not injury. It turns out this is a known deformity of rainbow trout, but Kevin wants to get a picture of it for the folks who do the lake stocking and fish research.

For the next two hours, we fish joyfully through what seems like five different weather systems: light powdery snow; then a bit of sun; then big almost rectangular snowflakes like floating ash, as if the sky is simultaneously burning and freezing; then another break and the sky is blue and sunny; and then it starts

snowing little round balls, hail the size of Rice Krispies. Through it all, I’m catching trout on a spinning rod with a complicated set of lures tied on, and Kevin is catching them with a fly rod off the back. We decide I’ll try to keep three fish of good enough size that the chef can cook them for Diane and me for dinner, so we assess each one for eating potential.

Kevin explains that a lot of people don’t need guides, for the lakes, or even for the streams which are stocked with cutthroat trout. He notes I could have gotten all the gear we’re using — including the boat and the motor and pretied flies and the bag lunch — from Vermejo. He sees I pretty much know what I’m doing with a spinning rod — most of my time fishing in New Mexico over the past 30 years has been by myself — and after a couple of recent lessons I can even fake fly-fishing, and catch a nice one on the fly rod.

What I don’t tell him is that I like fishing with a guide because it flashes me back to being a kid fishing with my father. My dad taught us to be self-sufficient. But when we fished with him, he still always did a lot of that stuff for us. When we tangled up our rods, he’d hand us his while going to work on the reel. I liked that feeling, it connected us. He’s been gone for 25 years now and when I fish I always think of him; when I net a trout, I thank him under my breath. Having a guide — especially one working behind me, so I can’t see him — lets me imagine that my dad is still there letting me fish without thinking.

By the time we’re ready to break for lunch at 1 p.m., we are in the middle of a complete whiteout snowstorm, with big flakes zipping horizontally past our eyes. Kevin takes a picture of me holding the three meaty fish we kept, which I figure means he’s hoping I’ll want to go back to the ranch after a bag lunch and warm up by the roaring fire. Our conversation in the truck cab is an interesting bit of strategy because he doesn’t want to do anything that makes me feel he’s trying to cut our paid day short — he’s too nice a guy and of course there’s a tip at risk. But then he makes a strategic blunder. He tells me that caught fish have to be to the kitchen by 3:30 to be served for dinner. So that means there could be two more hours of fishing available, if we’re willing to go back out into the squall. Which I am.

So, we go back out on the boat and start fishing again, with snow piling up on my knees and in the top of my hoodie but I don’t care. Because the fish are seeing the snowflakes hit the water and think it’s food! So they just keep biting.

After a half-hour, the snow starts tapering off but the sky turns a color we haven’t seen yet, so dark it’s hard to believe it’s midday. I say to Kevin that the light suddenly reminds me of Fredo Corleone’s final fishing trip. He laughs and then admits that he only saw “The Godfather” trilogy for the first time a few weeks ago. His dad made him watch it. Poor Fredo.

I don’t think he even caught anything before they killed him.

We actually catch a bunch more fish, and the sun comes back out again. And we get the fish back in time to be prepared for dinner. So when we sit down to eat, everyone at the other tables has menus. But our food just arrives.

First out of the kitchen is a heaping bowl of pieces of trout meat that have been dredged in blue corn flour and then lightly, perfectly fried. They are served with homemade tartar sauce and they are transplendent. Fileted trout is the entrée, appointed with multicolor baby carrots with parsley, onion, cilantro and olive oil, and more of that good cowboy broccolini.

Diane says it is the most delicious meal she ever had. The trout literally melts in our mouths.

T H E NE X T MORNING, I get up for one more “activity” — some fancy shotgun shooting with “pigeons” being launched not only the normal way for skeet shooting, but from five other positions behind me, beside me, all over the place. I’m a little better with a shotgun than a rifle — although for self-defense, I think I’d probably be more accurate casting a sharp lure at an attacker — so I do what I can, chong my shoulder again with the kickback, but have fun.

The last thing you do at Vermejo is tip, and it’s daunting. They recommend that you tip 10 percent to 20 percent on top of your bill — which is the equivalent of me “recommending” that all my books should be immediate bestsellers. You can tip in cash, you can tip on your card, you can tip and let it be split in the pool of all staff, or tip individuals. I almost call my accountant for advice on how to proceed.

When we check out, our bill is a gasp-worthy $4805.19. For two days.

As we drive away, I ask Diane what I know everyone is going to ask us.

“Is it worth it?”

To which she replies, “Whatever it cost to see that smile on your face after you caught those delicious fish was totally worth it to me.”

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THE LAST WORD

THE DIGITAL FIX INTERNET PLATFORMS HAVE SPLIT AMERICAN SOCIETY. CAN A REBOOTED WEB CHANGE THAT?

BY LO I S M. CO L L I N S

T

he internet was supposed to bring humanity together, transcending borders, bridging divides and making the planet a smaller place. In its early days, the World Wide Web did that, but a second wave — dubbed Web2 — took a hard turn, dividing people into factions and concentrating wealth and power into the hands of a few, posing a real danger to civil society. “Web2 has been financially successful for a small number of people,” says venture capitalist and former policy adviser Tomicah Tillemann, “but it’s also opened up some challenges for our democracy, using private information to manipulate the behavior of individuals.”

Tillemann is part of a push for another reboot. He recently left venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to become the global chief policy officer for Haun Ventures, an investment fund that smashed records by raising $1.5 billion to help build Web3. As he sees it, this new iteration will be more decentralized and democratic, incorporating blockchain technology — the innovation behind NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin — to return data and decision-making power to users, who will also benefit financially when they contribute to the success of an online community. “Right now,” he says, “I’m focused on building policy architecture for the 84

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next generation of the internet.”

It’s quite a turn for a 43-year-old former political speechwriter and adviser to President Joe Biden and two secretaries of state: Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. He’s had a hand in 20 major initiatives in 55 countries. His projects included rebuilding the Community

IF WE GET THIS RIGHT, WE COULD UNLOCK A NEW RENAISSANCE OF OPPORTUNITY AND CREATIVITY. WE GET THIS WRONG AND THE UNITED STATES WILL BE AN ALSORAN FOR DECADES.

of Democracies — like a United Nations in miniature, but only for democratic states — and creating perhaps the world’s most exclusive social network, a tech platform for former presidents and prime ministers to help leaders in new democracies. Still, when news breaks related to the blockchain, Tillemann is often a

go-to guy for media outlets looking to explain what it means or why it matters.

Since he earned his doctorate in international studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Yale grad has collaborated with the White House, MIT, Harvard, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the Lantos Foundation, the Global Blockchain Business Council, the Rockefeller Foundation and others. A former missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Budapest who still speaks impeccable Hungarian (and somewhat rusty Spanish), he’s also a devoted husband and father of five.

In a recent interview, Deseret talked to Tillemann about civil society, war in Ukraine and what the future of the web tells us about where we’re headed as a country.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE INTERNET AS IT IS?

The first generation of the web let most people access information online for the first time, sending email or viewing web pages. Starting in the early 2000s, Web2 evolved into the big consumer internet that we know today: platforms that we all rely on, that take our information, aggregate data from millions of users, use it to provide us with some basic services and create massive profits for the handful of

folks who sit on top of those platforms. Web2 has been financially successful for a small number of people, but it’s also opened up some challenges for our democracy, using private information to manipulate the behavior of individuals. It’s frankly incompatible with a healthy democracy.

SO WHAT DOES THE NEXT ITERATION LOOK LIKE?

What we’re trying to do with Web3 is built on a few key principles. First, communities should own the platforms they utilize. Second, their members should have a say in governance of those platforms. Third, they should have a share in the financial upside when networks prosper. In the Web2 era, network effects have benefited a small number of people who own the platforms, not the actual participants.

That needs to change. Finally, I think most of us would concede that we’ve lost control of our data. We need to give people back some say in how their information is used in the digital realm.

HOW WILL COMMUNITIES BE DIFFERENT IN WEB3?

In Web2, the cornerstone of value creation has been highly fragmented data collected from the digital communities that come together on platforms. That data is used to slice and dice society into ever-smaller groups so advertisers can target messages that will shape our purchasing behavior. In Web3, value is generated through a healthy, open community that brings people together to collaborate in the context of digital platforms. It’s a very different model.

YOU RECENTLY SAID THAT ONLINE BUSINESS MODELS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO A “PROFOUND DEFICIT OF FAITH AND TRUST.” TELL US ABOUT THAT.

We often think of nations as resting on three legs: You have government where political activity takes place, you have industry where we work for financial gain and then you have civil society, which is where you get to the core of what it means to build a society and solve problems together. This is where we join together in community organizations, in civic groups, in Scout troops, in religious congregations — and we work through peaceful means to make our societies better. But we have lost a lot of our muscle memory as more of our lives have moved into the Web2 world. Web3 is an

opportunity to re-create the capacity to bring people together from different backgrounds and unite them in common purpose in the digital realm.

THESE DAYS, IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE SOMETHING WE CAN ALL AGREE ON. WHAT’S THE GREATEST OBSTACLE?

The foundation of human collaboration, the way that we do what we do as a species, is coming to common consensus on an underlying set of facts and then going out to build companies and societies and communities on the basis of those facts. It has become increasingly difficult to achieve consensus around the essential information that provides a foundation for our lives. I believe Web3 platforms are uniquely suited to tackle that challenge. They’ve been designed from the outset to provide people everywhere with access to a common set of facts that they can rely on as they make decisions. Expanding our confidence in the information and the institutions we rely on is going to be critical to facilitating healthy collaboration going forward.

THAT MAKES SENSE, BUT HOW WOULD WE AGREE ON WHO’S IN CHARGE OF FACTS?

If we lived in a small community on the frontier 200 years ago, everybody would agree on what cow was Jim’s cow and what hay was Jim’s hay and what farm was Jim’s farm. The community shared that knowledge and everybody was able to live their lives with a consensus on what belonged to Jim. As communities grew and got more complex, we developed new mechanisms for keeping track of that information. Throughout history, we’ve relied on trusted authorities — often financial institutions or government institutions — to serve as custodians of that information, keeping track of what was Jim’s cow and Jim’s farm and Jim’s hay. Now, with decentralized platforms — the types we’re building in Web3 — we can put that knowledge back in the hands of communities. They will be able to see who’s who and what’s what and have confidence that the information is correct. This comes back to blockchain, which is a record-keeping system that enables different people in different places to quickly and confidently come to a shared understanding of facts.

For example, the only solution we have right now for keeping track of financial transactions is to work through intermediaries, like banks and credit card companies. Globally, we

pay about $22 trillion a year to the financial services industry. Going forward, we should be able to devolve a lot of that work and the cost back to communities, who won’t have to rely on intermediaries who are often quite expensive and often have their own priorities.

YOU WERE PART OF A RECENT EFFORT TO HELP UKRAINE THAT RELIED ON THIS TECHNOLOGY. WHAT HAPPENED?

Right after the invasion, the Ukrainian government issued an appeal for digital assets to help repel the Russian military. We jumped in.

I worked with Ukraine’s deputy minister for digital transformation to get some key leaders in the Web3 community to support these efforts. In just a few days, well over $150 million in digital assets came in from all over the planet. In years past it would have taken days or even weeks to get those resources to folks on the ground. Now, using Web3 tools, we were able to move them in minutes. Then you could see the expenditures that were occurring from these accounts, and that gave the folks contributing the money confidence that it was being spent as intended, purchasing body armor and ration kits and night-vision goggles and a variety of other supplies that have saved the lives of citizens and soldiers. It’s a powerful example of how global communities can come together in a space of just hours or days to respond to crises.

DO YOU THINK WE WILL USE THESE EVOLVING TOOLS TO SERVE HUMANITY OR WILL SELF-PROMOTION WIN?

The digital status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. There is widespread dissatisfaction across the political spectrum with the way platforms have evolved. The advent of Web3 lets us rethink these systems. Hopefully, we’ll be able to design structures that are better equipped to provide access to opportunity, foster creativity and support healthy democracies. We now know many of the mistakes that need to be avoided.

ANY LAST WORD?

Democracies need to develop an affirmative vision for how we want to use digital innovation to advance our values and strengthen our societies. The stakes are high: If we get this right, we could unlock a new renaissance of opportunity and creativity. We get this wrong and the United States and our allies will be also-rans in the decades to come. We are in that window now. It won’t stay open forever.

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PARTING SHOT

GE TYY IM AG ES

“We have an end in sight, and it’s not like this is forever.”

one million covid deaths in the u.s.

The U.S. flag flies at half-staff at the U.S. Capitol in memory of the nearly one million American deaths from the coronavirus.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the Covid-19 pandemic had killed 998,824 Americans and claimed more than 6.2 million lives around the world as of mid-May. PHOTOGR A PHY BY CHI P SOMODEVI LLA

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Adventure starts where the road ends.

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