HOLY SHIT! Scott thought. I need help. And who better to help him than his partner in godless academic-freedom crime: Sam Rushforth. Sam was, after all, co-president of the BYU Chapter of the AAUP. And he was not unctuous.
Sam was not sympathetic, either (he alleged that sympathy could be found between shit and syphilis in the dictionary). He agreed, however, to be Scott’s “faculty advocate.” As the two men prepared the appeal, they found it difficult to summon the “civility that becomes believers.” Some things are simply beyond belief.
Scott and Sam collaborated on the arguments they presented to the members of the appeal committee. Sam told the committee that, when he and Nancy were advocating stricter clean-air standards for Utah, “someone thought we were being contentious and threw a brick through our window. The people who have denied Scott’s application for promotion have, in effect, thrown a brick through his academic career.”
Scott concluded the appeal: “You have argued that I am a bad citizen because I used the word ‘unctuous’ in reference to hires of non-scholars and because I called BYU ‘sanctimonious’ The Dean has argued that I am a bad citizen because I held the university up to ridicule. You haven’t, however, addressed the question of whether an ‘unctuous’ and ‘sanctimonious’ university is ridiculous.”
12 March, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Bright sun this afternoon, glorious but still chilly for the light cotton shorts we both wear. A shiny black deposit on a rock proves to be relatively fresh fox (Vulpes fulva) scat. “A touch of diarrhea,” I observe.
“Here’s a set of paw prints.” On his knees, Sam points to small, rounded depressions in yesterday’s mud. Around the corner, we pass the scat of a more regular fox, a tight twist of black “tobacco,” also deposited conspicuously on a rock. Two years ago, we surprised a pair of red foxes dancing circles here, rising on two legs to paw at and dance with one another. A few weeks later, we looked down on a golden-brown fox backlit by a brilliant sunset, lighter hair marking a cross down the length of its back and across its shoulders. And that fall, we stood and watched the same cross-phase fox trot slowly away, watching us warily as it traversed a draw and bounded up a hill. At the top, it sat back on its haunches and watched us pass.
Since then, over the course of several hundred rides, we have seen many signs of foxes—but no actual foxes. Scat and tracks have served as the presence of an absence. We have come to relish this indirect, mediated relationship, to respect the intimate distance. Whenever we top a rise from which we have seen foxes in the past, our eyes scan the landscape. When no fox appears, we breathe a sigh of relief.
Relief?
It’s complicated, but maybe we’re relieved because we recognize ourselves as forerunners (foreriders) of the human wave encroaching on Utah’s wild places. If the foxes can slip our sight, they will be better off.
Grass is beginning to fill openings between the oak brush. Spears of death camus dot the meadow, a few of them cropped by browsing deer, we surmise, although that perplexes us. I try to dig up a bulb.
“Careful,” Sam warns.
It’s a double warning. There is the poison, of course. But Sam is sensitive to intrusion, to human hubris in the face of nature. I’ve heard him argue that we would have a better world if we accorded legal standing to trees. Last summer, when I plucked a blooming stalk of hound’s tongue to take home to draw, Sam couldn’t suppress an “awwww!”
The pointed leaves of the death camus rise a couple of inches from the ground. I dig for more than four inches and still don’t reach the bulb. When I pull on the plant, it breaks off.
“The bulbs will be deep,” Sam explains. “Maybe a foot down.”
I wipe my fingers carefully on my sweatshirt.
Sam points to another plant. “Look at this little umbel. The yellow buds in the center are already open.”
The inconspicuous plant hugs the ground, the yellow mass of tiny flowers surrounded by almost fern-like green leaves, streaks of purple along the triply forked stems. “Maybe a carrot,” Sam surmises. “Or a parsnip. At least some sort of umbel. The first spring flowers on the foothills of Mt. Timpanogos this year!”
“By the way,” I tell Sam on the ride down, “there was a quick response to our appeal. The letter from the Chair of the panel came yesterday. ‘We regret the disappointment,’ he wrote, ‘and we hope for a day in which you will be able to understand and appreciate the perspectives of all your colleagues here.’”
“He’s got a point, Abbott,” Sam says. “What we have here is a failure to communicate how much you understand and appreciate the self-righteousness of the so-called leaders who are destroying what had the potential to be a decent university.”
18 March, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
A dark velvet, blue-spotted mourning cloak butterfly flits across our path. I chased these as a child at my grandparents’ farm in Windsor, Colorado. Childhood memories are powerful. When I decided to move from Tennessee to Utah, the Dean of Vanderbilt’s School of Arts and Sciences asked if Brigham Young University was offering me more money. “No,” I said. “I miss the scent of sage.” Visceral childhood memory trumped academic prestige. And, of course, there’s the matter of public lands. Tennessee, though exquisitely beautiful, is almost entirely privately owned. The federal government controls sixty-four percent of Utah, and ten-percent of the landscape is state controlled. That means it belongs to us and not to someone with money to build a big fence.
Another insect flashes past, a brilliant scarlet-orange patch under its wings. “Boxelder bug,” Sam says. “‘Boisea trivittata.’ Named by Thomas Say, an American entomologist who was part of an expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819 and 1820. He was the first to classify and name the coyote and the lazuli bunting as well. The bright red of this bug, like the red of many species, warns predators that there’s a foul smell and/or taste waiting for them if they attack.”
Up the trail, a tank-like ladybug (Hippodamia convergens) splits its red-orange shell (more foul odor!) to reveal black wings. Small spiders dodge our tires. When I think I have found the first tender green leaf on the still barren oak brush, it turns out to be a lime-green stinkbug (Acrosternum hilare). Another stinker.
At the top of the hill, Sam points to a tiny plant with red leaves. “Some plants use this red coloring to protect themselves from the bright sunlight that bleaches their chlorophyll. The pigment is in a class known as anthocyanins, the same pigments that, along with tannin, may make red wine good for the heart and cause the red coloring in fall leaves.”
“Thanks for the lecture,” I tell Sam. “But help me with something else. Last night I looked up death camus in both of my field guides to wildflowers. The one lists only meadow death camus, Zigadenus venenosus, and doesn’t mention any other variants. The other book describes mountain death camus, Zigadenus elegans, and notes the existence and characteristics of Zigadenus gramineus, Zigadenus venenosus, and Zigadenus paniculatus. What’s the deal?”
“You’ve stumbled onto something controversial and interesting here,” Sam says. “It’s a classic disagreement between the lumpers (me included) and the splitters. Your second guide was written by splitters and your first by lumpers. Lumpers see splitters as scientists who proliferate species endlessly on the basis of insubstantial differences. Splitters see lumpers as scientists who are too lazy or conservative to pay attention to the importance of detail. Actually, the trick is in understanding what details matter in separating taxa. Dandelions, for example, are a great source of tension between splitters and lumpers. They grow from Alaska to Patagonia and most lumpers call all or most of them Taraxacum officinale. Because dandelions are self-fertilizing, mutations tend to “stick,” and splitters distinguish hundreds of species. Check your guides and see what you find.”