Howl. Susan Imhoff Bird

range, sixty miles distant. I had no idea skies could be so huge, that I could live on a mountain, that mountains could rim the edges of my world.

      A few houses lined the road north of us, and to our south lay an expanse of sagebrush and bare dry earth, the only other houses so encased by pines and bends of the road that only a portion of roof top and the occasional glint of metal gutter were visible. Isolated from city life, even country village life, we were twenty minutes—in good weather—from a grocery store, schools, work, any kind of extra-curricular activity. A gas station and café sat at the interstate exit, one mile and two big hills below my house, and early on I learned that a quick bike ride down to buy a candy bar resulted in a twenty-five minute walk and push back home. My friends were ten- and fifteen-minute walks away, and though a few houses perched in between, most of what I walked past was sagebrush, oak, aspen, and wild native grasses. Grasshoppers clacked and flew past, a dragonfly might magically float along beside me for dreamlike moments. The soil was gray and rocky at the edge of the road. We had moved to something called high desert which was arid and parched when it wasn’t arid and covered with snow and ice.

      We owned the sky above us in every direction, the air almost always clear and clean, the blue cloudless. I quickly learned the magic of Utah winters: snowstorms blanketing the land, wind whipping snow drifts to heights above my head, the world nothing but a blizzard of white, and then the clouds pass, breaking apart and away, and the skies turn blue as the sun sparkles and bounces from surface to surface, simultaneously blinding and thrilling the eye.

Here I learned the basics of conservation. Take what you need, and utilize well what you take. Never waste water: it is precious. Don’t use lights unless you need them, and always turn them off when you’re done. Plan ahead and consolidate your errand, work, and school trips. Make use of what you have, and be thoughtful with the earth’s resources. Arid land is fragile, wildlife wondrous and to be respected. Today’s snow is next spring’s wildflower and next summer’s drinking water. We are visitors, guests, stewards of the earth supporting and surrounding us. Act accordingly.

      Stewardship is a concept espoused by most who work the land, by conservationists, by hikers and rock climbers and explorers, by those who run rivers and guide people on outdoor expeditions for a living. Experiencing changes over time brings home the effect we have on the land, and this effect is magnified in drier, western environments. Cryptobiotic soil illustrates the importance of understanding the landscape. It looks like a dark patch on sandy soil, but is actually alive. Made of lichens, algae, fungi, mosses and cyanobacteria, it not only helps retain moisture, but also stabilizes the dirt and sand, and plays a role in nitrogen fixation. One errant footstep destroys what may take from years to a century to re-form. Step here, don’t step there.

New discoveries blossom daily. When I’m introduced to a better way to grow vegetables, cut an onion, pedal my bike, I adopt new behaviors and become more efficient. More effective. When I learn that wild animals are at risk because of roads, fences, hunting licenses, or legislative actions, I want to change our rules and practices. But as a society, we move sluggishly. The fight for women’s right to vote began in the United States in the 1840s; the nineteenth amendment, establishing this right, was passed in 1920. In the mid-nineteenth century, sepsis—infection—killed almost half of all surgical patients. When surgeon Joseph Lister realized that infection seeps into patients via germs, he identified chemicals and processes to kill those germs. While he proved that germ-destroying cleansing of hands, tools, and wounds prevented sepsis and saved lives, his observations were greatly ignored, and a generation passed before Lister’s recommendations became routine. With their adoption, the practice of medicine changed. Both brilliant and wise, Max Planck once said that scientific truth doesn’t convert its opponents by being true, but instead becomes accepted when the naysayers finally die and the next generation grows up accustomed to it. Over time we’ve learned to build more structurally sound buildings, install smoke detectors, get rid of lead paint and asbestos. We have taken better care of ourselves. We’ve made our bodies and homes safer. Life expectancy has increased.

      But we haven’t done as well for our environment. We’ve sliced away at wilderness, and let former ranch and wildlands be sold to developers. The Keep America Beautiful campaign began in 1953, and anti-littering laws exist in all states—in some, for longer than forty years. Yet people continue to litter. Cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item in the world: over 4.5 trillion butts are tossed out car windows, thrown on sidewalks and streets, ground into the soil of hiking trails. Each takes from four to five hundred years to completely break down. We take for granted our hills and canyons, our lakes and streams, and the soil of our farmland. We have been reluctant to respond to the promise of a warmer earth. We roll our eyes at environmentalists. But reality is that we share a single environment with every other being on this planet. Our collective homes form one huge, interconnected home. Risk to one is, essentially, risk to all.

As residents of this common environment, we are vulnerable to nature’s whims as well as to changes imposed by humanity. We have homes, rarely inviolate, but protected, sheltered, as best possible. Wild creatures are constricted to nests or dens only when they are newly born, giving birth or nursing. Once weaned, they explore trees and grasslands, hills and furrows and streams, expanding home outward. Knowing nothing of artificial boundaries imposed by humans until we enter their space and erect fences and buildings or draw lines on paper and state on this side of the line they are safe, on the other side, they may be shot.