Rotarian Magazine - March 2007

"Rockin Good Time"

By Janis S. Chambers
Photos by Nick Sokoloff

Head out in any direction from Salt Lake City, site of the 2007 RI Convention, and you’ll find adventure. In less than a day, you can drive to Las Vegas and seven national parks. Senior Editor Janice S. Chambers visits two, Arches and Canyonlands, as well as nearby Moab, a quirky Western town with a Rotary club to match. It’s almost twilight in Utah’s canyonlands, and I’m having dinner on a movie set. It really looks like one, with fiery reds and brilliant pinks splashing against the dusky rock wall as the sun sets and the Colorado River rushes below. This is also the exact location where John Wayne starred in a John Ford blockbuster, Rio Grande.

Hundreds of other movies have been filmed here since then, taking advantage of the spectacular scenery – huge, naturally carved sculptures; steep canyons; roaring rivers; and everywhere, the red rock that glows iridescent when the sun hangs low on the horizon. Behind me is the famed Castle Rock, the narrow tower that’s appeared in several TV ads with a Chevy Impala perched on top. Nearby is the spot where Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon famously drove their convertible off a cliff in Thelma and Louise.

Arches National Park, called “the most beautiful place on earth” by writer Edward Abbey, is minutes away. I’m at the Red Cliffs Lodge, just outside Moab, with the owner, Rotarian Colin Fryer. Like most locals, he came here searching for a different sort of life. Fryer, a comfortable, handsome man, moved to Moab several years ago to fulfill his boyhood fantasy of owning a ranch. In true Western fashion, one unexpected thing led to another, and he now owns a vineyard, a resort, riding stables, and a movie museum (down one flight from his wine tasting room). He looks like he’s lived here, in the saddle, all his life. He’s also become a dedicated, active member of the Rotary Club of Moab.

The town itself is a mix of relative newcomers like Fryer, including wealthy retirees, hard-core mountain bikers, aging hippies, ex-ski bums, and a few remaining miners from the days when Moab was the uranium capital of the world. The small downtown is still charming, with genuine kitsch, such as a giant rock shop that sells dinosaur bones and a combination margarita bar/Internet cafe.

The area has undergone many transformations through the years. Anasazi ruins date back thousands of years, but by 1877, when Latter-day Saint pioneers settled here permanently, only nomadic Utes lived along the Colorado River. Moab thrived as a uranium boomtown in the mid-20th century, but when the market went bust, the town did too. Stores up and down the main street quickly closed down. Then, a handful of entrepreneurs, including Rotarian Bob Jones, who owns the local Tag-a-Long Expeditions outfitter, had the idea to promote Moab as the mountain-biking capital of the world. It worked. Today, the Slickrock Bike Trail, a grueling four-hour loop over naked sandstone, is the world’s most popular mountain-biking trail.

Other outdoor enthusiasts quickly followed. The region, with its rugged, breathtaking terrain, is popular with kayakers, bikers, hikers, bird-watchers, and off-roaders. It’s also a favorite stop for the busloads of tourists who visit Canyonlands National Park, where the Colorado and Green rivers meet, and Arches National Park, home to the iconic Delicate Arch, which appears on the Utah license plate. Today, Moab is redefining itself once again, trying to avoid “Aspenization” as wealthy retirees and second-home owners buy up land, squeezing out some longtime residents. Locals also struggle with land-use debates about motorized vehicles and the potential return of uranium mining, touted by some as a clean alternative to carbon-based fuels. The Rotary Club of Moab, chartered in 1957, represents a cross-section of the town, a bridge between new and old. Like most Rotarians in Utah, which has the highest rate of volunteerism in the United States, Moab club members are actively involved in both community and international projects.

Several of them recall the ghost-town, posturanium days, including Hans Weibel, a Swiss native who moved here from Vail, Colo., in the 1970s. On my first day in Moab, he takes me for a quick Jeep trip on his favorite trail, Fins and Things. I feel like I’m in one of my son’s toy monster trucks, mounting a slope almost vertically – at least it seems that way to a flatlander like me. He grins and makes the maneuver with barely a pause.

When we get back to town, Weibel introduces me to Theresa King, a past club president. When the District 5420 Conference was held here in 2004, she wanted to make a real entrance, something fitting to this place, so she parachuted in. She tells me that that her co-conspirator chickened out at the last second.

Next, I meet Moab club member Joe Kingsley, the inventor of Glo Germ, who moved here in 1968 with a long ponytail and started a commune of sorts. Glo Germ contains ingredients that are the exact size of bacteria. When you wash your hands, the fake germs that you failed to scrub off glow under a black light. TV news shows clamor for the stuff when they want to run exposés on the dangers of unclean cutting boards and the like, he explains. (While I’m visiting, the NBC network calls.) Glo Germ is primarily used by hospitals to train employees, and the Moab club has donated tons of it to developing nations for lifesaving hygiene education. I leave with a giant jar of Sore No More, a salve for sore muscles that Kingsley also invented.

Our next stop is the local Rotary club park. Not surprisingly, it’s offbeat, filled with giant instruments created by a local sculptor. Weibel happily bangs on a piano. It starts to rain, and as we scurry back to the car, I comment on the kids still splashing around. “When you live here, you enjoy the rain,” he replies. Storm clouds are the novelty in Moab, of course, not the brilliant blue skies.

We head to dinner at Weibel’s home, high up on a cliff, hewn into the rock. He shows me an ancient petroglyph he recently discovered carved near the front door. Inside, one entire wall consists of solid rock. Over dinner, he tells me about his work building a shelter for feral cats. “There’s a lot of volunteer stuff going on in this town,” he adds.

The next day, I hit a Jeep trail, courtesy of Moab Rotarian Bob Jones. A couple comes along for the ride. They’d bought seats Jones had donated for a fundraiser for YouthLinc, a Rotarian-operated nonprofit based in Salt Lake City that helps teens raise funds for humanitarian trips to Africa and Latin America.

We bounce through the spectacular scenery of Canyonlands National Park, just south of Moab, where the Green and Colorado rivers carved canyons nearly 1,500 feet deep. I’m happy I’m not driving on this roller-coaster ride. In the afternoon, we take a pass on experts-only rapids, with names like Satan’s Gut and Skull Rapid, for a leisurely and scenic float. That’s Jones’ favorite pastime, but with a twist: He likes to go solo, at night – just drifting, all night. “You can see the shadows of the cliffs and every star,” he says. “Some birds are out, just making a beautiful sound.”

Jones says he strives to put the environment first when making business decisions. He doesn’t run jet boats on the Green River, and 12 of the 14 local outfitters have agreed to do the same. “People in this town try to work together and help each other out,” he says. “That’s one of the nicest things about this place.” He’s also an involved Rotarian, who supports the club’s annual night for high school seniors, developed after some students died in car accidents on prom night, and after-school programs for kids with working parents, typical in a tourist town like Moab.

The next morning, I head to Arches National Park, north of town, with Rotarian Laura Joss, the park’s superintendent. We stop at the new visitors’ center and her office, a cabin built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era public works program. Joss has worked at several national parks, including the Grand Canyon, and she always joins the local Rotary club wherever she lives to get quickly connected with the community.

I pick up a brochure called Don’t Die out There! There’s danger in any wildlife area, but here, the harsh sun, intense heat, lack of water, and poisonous reptiles pose some unique challenges. It’s a terrain like no other. Even the mice here eat scorpions, biting their deadly tails off first. “Good, you didn’t wear sandals,” Joss says. “Keep your shoes on,” she adds. “Snakes like to hide at the water fountains.” The scenery makes it all worthwhile – the dramatically changing hues of the red rock, carved and etched into surprising, even whimsical, sculptures, which have endured for ages, untouched by modern civilization.

While I’m in Moab, a visitor tries to scale Delicate Arch. As more people discover the area, their presence – even that of the most respectful visitors – threatens the fragile ecosystem. “Our challenge is figuring out how to protect the arches so they don’t get damaged and vandalized and still allow visitors access,” Joss says.

Armed with plenty of water, we head to Landscape Arch, one of 2,000 natural sandstone arches here. We pass some entertaining hoodoos, rock formations with names like “The Three Gossips.”

We reach our destination, the park’s longest arch, at 306 feet. The fragile ribbon of stone was created over eons of time. On our drive back to Moab, Joss tells me about how the Hopi people believe arches are sacred and that spirits dwell in them, so they never cross through them. “The direct descendents of Hopi, Paiute, and Navajo people still live in this area,” she says. “They can tell you stories about almost every one of these arches.”

I spend my final night at the Red Cliffs Lodge. As the sun sets and the glow fades from the red rock, Fryer talks about Moab and Rotary – the friendships he’s made and the lives Rotary has improved, including his own. “Rotarians should come to Moab after the convention to relax and talk about their experiences together,” he suggests. “There’s something about the mountains and the desert and the beauty here that give you great ideas.”

I leave Moab reluctantly. Back home, I open Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, a book about the area recommended by Joss. The author, Terry Tempest Williams, writes: “If we have open space then we have open time to breathe, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray to move freely. … Is this the birthplace of inspiration?”

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