#zion np

[hrsnowden]

Clyde - Zion National Park - Utah

Harry Snowden

[nicolesanabriaart]

Zion 🏜️

The highlight of each day is watching the sunset paint these mountains in the most fiery colors

[carscokesleeparchive]

In 2011, I played the Honest Hearts dlc for Fallout New Vegas. What captured my attention was what they tried to convey in the scenery of Zion, the Grand Staircase, and Bryce canyon. I knew of Zion and spent a lot of time in the California desert growing up. But something captivated me. Something about the beauty of this area spoke to me in my core. I never forgot it. For the scenery only, Honest Hearts was always my favorite dlc.

For years after, lots of friends tried to get me on a trip to Zion. It never felt accessible. I carried a full schedule of post apocalyptic events and cons, I ran a camp for a few years, and organized an event of our own. Finally, my wife and their best friend wanted to get together and camp. Zion was where they chose to go.

Standing in the park filled me with emotion, and I teared up and cried at the base of The Narrows. This was it. This is Zion. A place formed over millions of years. One of the most beautiful places on earth and I lived to see it.

When I was in the visitors center, seeing the park rangers young and old filled me with such deep sadness. I had wanted to be a park ranger in high school. For a lot of reasons, I gave up on that dream. I still remind myself there's ways I could work in or with the park service. But seeing them there made me wonder how my life would have been different.

[pastordude87]

Gaps ... Generational (part 3 of 4)

This is a continuation of looking at gaps, especially with a point-of-view from a hiker, but with lessons for life. The older I get, the more I find myself like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino or Walter Matthau in Grumpy Old Men. I want to have little to do with irritating, snot-nosed, noise-making imps that interrupt my solitude. (okay, maybe not to that extent, but I am truly afraid of turning…

[docileeffects]

[larryshapiro]

National Park Service - Zion National Park - 2023 HME SFO pumper

[weazellysnapshots]

It’s so hard to leave— until you leave…

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📷: Canon Rebel T6

6.10.22-6.14.22

[mybumblebeeblr]

I remember getting the coolest NPS Pride shirt my first month working for the park service. It's not official uniform but employees of the park put an order together and are allowed to use the logos so it's got the right font and everything. It has a little rainbow ranger on the front and was maybe the first time I've ever felt pride for an organization i was working for.

Please read the article. If you have feelings and need to express them, please know NPS has all the social media Facebook Instagram Twitter Official Page. So does the Department of Interior which oversees the Park Service Facebook Instagram Twitter/X Official Page.

Do you have a favorite park?

Acadia Facebook Instagram official page

Yosemite Facebook Instagram official page

Grand Canyon Facebook Instagram official page

Yellowstone Facebook Instagram official page

Zion Facebook Instagram official page

National Mall Facebook Instagram official page

Stonewall Facebook Instagram official page

Chances are they have their own pages that accept comments as well. Hard to say whether they will be allowed to post Pride content this year, but if you're looking for a more positive approach keep an eye out for those posts and show your support in the comments.

The people who run the nps social media are generally really cool. If nothing else you can get some neat facts!!

[enemy-to-the-state]

@moonsoakedmoss

[typhlonectes]

“Hey Ranger! Is that a California Condor or a Turkey Vulture?”

Well, let’s take a closer look! In the summertime, it can be hard to tell the difference between a condor and a turkey vulture, especially as they soar above you! (Or below you, if you’re on Angels Landing). The bird on the right is definitely a condor, and here are a few ways to tell: Condors are BIG! They have a ten-foot wingspan, the widest of all the birds in the United States. Notice the number on their wing? Each condor has their own number to help scientists recognize and keep track of the condors they spot. Their wings are white towards their center, and their feathers are black out towards the end of their wings. You guessed it, the bird on the left is a turkey vulture! Turkey vultures are quite large birds, but their wingspan is typically around 5.5 feet long. In flight, turkey vultures will have a slight “v” in their wings when looking at them from straight on. Condor wings are generally straight out when they are in flight. Turkey vulture wings are darker in the middle and the feathers are white toward the ends of their wings. Though they are different birds, both are critically important in Zion National Park. Their food source is carrion, or dead and decaying meat (you could say they are the ultimate clean up crew). Since decomposition takes much longer in the harsh desert, having scavengers is a great way to keep the area looking (and smelling) nice. What are ways you can protect these important animals?

Learn more about the California Condor recovery story at:

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/condors.htm

NPS Photo: Gavin Emmons

via: Zion National Park

[blessphemy]

Thinking about the social and legal construct of Wilderness (USA edition)

Motorized vehicles cannot be used in Wilderness backcountry — trail-building in Wilderness uses human muscle and livestock to carry supplies.

“Untouched” or “Unspoiled” wilderness. The (false) idea that human hands have never affected parts of Nature. The notion that human influence fundamentally takes away from the Naturalness.

Contrast these Touches for a moment: the Hetch-Hetchy dam, which provides water to the 39 million-population human city of San Francisco, whose creation was fought bitterly by conservationists. The desert razed into half-empty speculative rows of suburbs around Las Vegas, sprawl in an area inhospitable to human life. Food forests and Native American agriculture that supports a higher load of animal and plant life/diversity a century after it was left unattended. Invasive species control. Wildlife rehabilitation. Farming. Ranching. Ecosystems tended and bent by human hands.

Leave No Trace

Controlled burns. Firefighting.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 states that namelessness is an aspect of wilderness. Basically this means the namelessness of things must be preserved, and you can’t just go naming mountain peaks and rivers and stuff in places that are designated Wilderness.

Zion National Park has a valley which the native Americans who lived there called “Mukuntuweap.” Some still do call it Mukuntuweap. “Zion” is a name Mormons gave it. It is an oasis in the desert, a place where humans performed agriculture on the river and hunted animals. Today the valley is subject to millions of human visitors from all over the world. There is no farming or hunting, though native Americans are Permitted to harvest some for personal use. The land is, in the NPS fashion, preserved in a ‘natural’ a state as possible.

In Capitol Reef National Park, another Utah oasis, there is an orchard of fruit trees fed by the water. You can camp there today. The orchard was created by Mormon settlers, and there are historical installations about it.

I’m not against conservation, Leave No Trace, or the works that National Parks or forest service has done in the USA, but, listen. This too is a form of deliberate design. It’s an expression of human ideas of how the Ecosystem should be. Wilderness is to an extent a concept and ideal of human imagination. We have the power and responsibility to shape our shared environment.

I think. There exists among some people a squeamishness and embarrassment about existing as humans. How dare we take up space. Look at all the destruction our indiscriminate self-centeredness has wrought on the natural world: suburbs, strip-mining, fallow fields. But these industrial-scale extractive endeavors are recent.

And we are also part of the world. To live and die is to consume and rot. We are part of the wild. We take of it and we tend it.

[matt-barber58]

Zion NP (flyover country)

[gaymeing]

If anyone has ever lived near a national park, then this has been apparent for a while. The roads to the park and in the park will get clogged with noisy traffic, people will be more likely to not follow trails and camp outside designated areas, and even when facilities are used properly the sheer volume of people puts strain on matinence, especially for highly trafficked trails. These trails would normally have periods of low volume where staff and rangers can go in and fix any issues and improve the trails, but when attendance is so high it makes those periods of downtime shorter and less frequent.

In addition to this, more visitors has negative effects on the local ecology. When more people visit, it is more likely that those people bring pests and invasive species with them from outside the area, damaging the local ecosystem if not contained within a short timespan. As well as this, when more people visit the less locally sourced firewood there is to go around, and people are more likely to bring nonlocal firewood which inevitably brings highly destructive invasive flora and fauna.

My personal pet peeve with this is that the "secret" (less traveled) trails and spots are now super popular thanks to social media and the internet, so now if people want that feeling of quiet or of discovery they have to go off trail and/or to other less traveled trails, repeating the cycle.

While we're in the subject of American land conservation, here's my other spicy soapboxy take that no one asked for.

I will defend the US National Park Service with pretty much everything I've got. As a beacon of land conservation, ensuring that the public can recreate in that land, and advocating for the general concept of public ownership of land, they're absolutely incredible. It's very rare to see the level of accessibility infrastructure that you'll find in a national park in other places, including by other government services in the US.

And yes, there are problems with US colonialism on those lands. It should be acknowledged and corrected. But if you target your anger with US treatment of indigenous people towards the organization that works closely with tribal leaders, helps protect indigenous sites across the country, has joint management of lands with tribes in many areas, and currently has a Native American director.... I don't know what to say to you.

I fully understand that this is my opinion as an uneducated white boy, and if Native people want to correct me in this, I'm welcome to it.

But I do feel very, VERY strongly about this because our national parks are suffering right now. I want to make a longer post about this because it infuriates me so much, but national park visitation and general land area has increased dramatically over the past few decades, while their budget has barely kept up with inflation. They're serving orders of magnitude more people and more causes with the same amount of resources, and it shows.

Alright dumb white boy opinion over

[jeffambrose]

Mukuntuweap (Zion NP) and some other Northern Arizona spots last week.

[crisp-autumnal-air]

Fallen autumn leaves by Zion National Park NPS Photo/Cadence C Cook

[dryndelicate]

"Hey, you equestrians out there. If you ever have the chance, go for a ride in Zion NP, Utah. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid already hid out here."