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Show THE ZEPHYR /DECEMBER 2006-JANUARY 2007 THE CANYON COUNTRY Meee writer, so prolific at his craft that’s he’s almost made himself extinct, asked a friend of mine, “Can you think of other ek places that need guidebooks? You know...where people would pay money?” There was a hint of desperation in his voice. Portable GPS units and cell phones have made backcountry hiking and four-wheeling about as revelatory as o PO BOX 327. MOAB, UTAH 84532 JIM STILES, PUBLISHER www.canyoncountryzephyr.com eczephyr@frontiernet.net moabzephyr@yahoo.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ken Sleight Martin Murie Ned Mudd David Cremean Karen Hastings Scott Silver Lance Christie Lisa Braddock Erica Walz THE ARTIST John Depuy HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS Herb Ringer (1913-1998) ZEPHYR PILOT & AERIAL RECONAISSANCE Paul Swanstrom ZEPHYR TRANSPORTATION FLEET SPECIALISTS _ Gene Schafer Tom Wesson WEBMASTER Gary Henderson spankme2times@excite.com a trip to the mall. Lost? Check your GPS unit. Lost with a broken ankle or the Jeep’s stuck in mud up to its axles? Call a tow truck or the ambulance on your cell phone after you figure your location on your GPS. Some adventure. Search & Rescue teams don’t even get to hone their tracking skills anymore. start getting lost as well. fee IN DEFENSE vie OT of “GETTING And Le ing, the catered backcountry tour offers the safest option of all. Nobody’s going to get lost on a four hour tour when they're paying $150 for the experience. Getting your cus- LOST” The state of “being lost” does not have a positive connotation in the minds of most of us nowadays and it’s true, it can be a terrifying and even deadly experience. | recall the first time I got lost—I was just three and on a shopping trip to a local department store with my mother. She was trying on a dress and I grew bored after a while, sitting on a bench with my legs dangling while other mothers came ‘THE ZEPHYR, copyright 2006-2007 The Zephyr is published six times a year at Moab, Utah. The opinions expressed herein are not neces- sarily those of its vendors, advertisers, or even at times, of its publisher. All photographs and cartoons are by the publisher, unless otherwise noted. of fresh roasted nuts somewhere and I followed my nose as children often do. Suddenly I realized, from my perspective, just two and a half feet above the carpet, that I could know what they are anymore. by and pinched me on the cheek. I could smell the aroma no longer see my mother. I can still remember the moment of absolute terror that gripped me as I spun frantically in all directions, searching for the sight of that familiar face. Before I could even begin to get too hysterical though, I heard mom’s voice and followed it back home to the comfort and security of her arms. I suppose all children experience something similar and perhaps that’s why we spend the rest of our lives trying to avoid getting lost again. But is it as bad as we have con- vinced ourselves? Is getting lost always something we should fear and dread? And do we truly understand what “getting lost” means? Once, on a Stiles Family Vacation, we were on our way to Clearwater Beach, Florida, in the pre-interstate highway days, and my dad had to negotiate the streets of Atlanta. We made a few wrong turns and | could hear him ae “Are we lost?” lasked my dad anxiously. : “NO!” he said. “I am NOT lost...I just don’t know where we are.” Now, not onli is it difficult to get lost or misplaced on a road trip, it’s damn near impossible. Interstate Teeways bypass cities and small towns alike, though I suppose there are still a few inept souls who could get lost in the endless loop of a cloverleaf interchange Very often that’s the case. He knew he'd find his way out of Atlanta eventually, even if it took the rest of the afternoon and only after he'd relinquished a bit of his manhood by asking a local for directions. Still he wasn’t lost. And there was an upside to our misadventure. We saw parts of Atlanta that we would have otherwise missed and the gentleman who found us on the map and pointed us straight was an interesting character that we would have otherwise never met. Being “lost” was at least more interesting than if we'd sailed smoothly through town without a hitch. Now, not only is it difficult to get lost or misplaced on Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. Alfred Edward Houseman tomers lost is...well, it’s just bad business. And be sure of this, the commercial exploitation of wilderness in the American West will someday send cold shivers down the spines of earnest environmentalists, who failed to see the threat in the early years of the 21st Century. Ultimately, the fear of getting lost has more to do with our rapidly diminished self-reliance than anything else. Our inability to take care of ourselves, to be responsible for our own safety and well-being, has left many of us fearful of and intimidated by the Great Unknown. We long for a Mystery, are inspired by Adventure, but we don’t even patience as we began fo travel in circles. SUBSCRIPTIONS & TRANSCRIPTIONS Linda Vaughan CIRCULATION JA Bryan Lance Lawrence Jose Churampi Mark Anderson Kathy Aldous At this rate, they'll if all that life-saving technology is too intimidat- a toad trip, it’s damn near impossible. Interstate freeways bypass cities and small towns alike, though I suppose there are still a few inept souls who could get lost in the endless loop of a cloverleaf interchange. If we need directions, there’s little hope of finding an interesting character, to quiz; the best we can dream of, since they’re located at nearly every freeway exit from New York to L.A,, is the blank and disinterested stare of a McDonalds trainee. In 2006, more than 10 million Americans have installed GPS units in their vehicles, so they don’t even need to consult the road atlas. Instead a metallic dispassionate “voice” tells us where to go. I'd like to turn the tables someday and tell a GPS unit “where to go,” but I suspect the conversation would go nowhere. The brutal predictability of daily life is, in fact, the reason more of us seek something different in the rural backways of America, but here again, our fear of getting lost has taken the fun and adventure out of the very experience we seek. Aldo Leopold once said, “To what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map?” But guidebook writers, whose literary endeavors stand toe-to-toe with the lofty rhetoric of used car salesmen, are determined to ‘make short change of those blank spots in short order. One 2 Packaged and marketed beyond recognition. For myself, I don’t particularly long to be lost in the irreversible sense, but I love it when I don’t know where Iam. ‘Try it sometime—it may be a transcendental experience. DID MELVIN DUMMAR FIND THE “LOST” HOWARD HUGHES? A few months ago, I was listening to KUER’s excellent “Radio West” with Doug Fabrizio. He and his producer Elaine Clark manage to offer one of the most consistently informative and entertaining programs on public radio. I’m grateful that they haven’t moved on to bigger markets. We need “Radio West.” The program that struck a personal chord with me was Fabrizio’s interview with Gary Magneson, a former FBI agent who recently wrote a book called “The Investigation.” The book is about Utahn Melvin Dummar and an incredible story that few believe. But I do (I think). Dummar claimed that in 1967, while driving a lonely dirt road in the Nevada desert, he came across an old man lying semi-conscious and incoherent in the middle of the gravel. Dummar helped the man into his truck and drove him to Las Vegas. The old man identified himself as Howard Hughes. Hughes asked for money, Melvin gave him all the change in his pocket and left him behind the Sands Hotel. He never gave the encounter another thought. Years later, after Hughes’ death, a will was discovered on a receptionist’s desk at Mormon Church headquarters in Salt lake City. In it, Hughes left $156 million to his desert savior, Melvin Dummar. Later, Dummar’s story was ridiculed and dismissed by the courts and the public. Hollywood made a movie called “Howard and Melvin” but Dummar claimed that in 1967, while driving a lonely dirt road in the Nevada desert, he came across an old man lying semi-conscious and incoherent in the middle of the oer The old m identified Hinisele as Howard Hughes Dummar faded into obscurity: Now, Magneson has found evidence that supports Dummar’s claim. He says that old Desert Inn records, the hotel where Hughes stayed, prove Hughes was away on precisely the day Dummar claims to have encountered Hughes. And he has the testimony of Robert Deiro, a Las Vegas businessman and pilot who says that on four occasions in the late 60s, he flew Hughes to a brothel north of Vegas called the Cottontail Ranch. Hughes apparently had an ongoing interest in a prostitute named Sunny. On one of those visits, Deiro fell asleep waiting for Hughes to return from a Sunny visit, but when he awoke, Hughes was gone. It was the same night Dummar found Hughes. Deiro flew back alone, but never made the connection to the Dummar. story until just a couple years ago. Recently the media asked Dummar if he felt vindicated after all these years. He said, “I've gota lot of hope but not much fait ~ |