The Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake is the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi River. It is approximately 75 miles long and about 35 miles wide. It’s the sixth most saline body of water in the world, at 22%, just behind the Dead Sea.  It is to saline to support fish, however several types of algae live in the lake and Brine shrimp/brine flies tolerate the high salt content and feed on the algae. The brine flies are harmless, tiny little things and are the primary food source for many birds that migrate to the lake. 

We spent the day at Bridger Bay Beach on the north end of Antelope Island with our hosts and fellow folkies, the Danzig family (Otter Creek). 

The beach had a distinctive “Vet Clinic” smell. Add that to the swarming flies and brine shrimp bobbing in the water and most would turn away. However, we were determined to really embrace this unique body of water and especially looking forward to floating like a cork. To lie back and float upon the lake with only the sound of the gulls overhead is a unique experience that we will cherish. 

 

 

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Park City Originals

Let us introduce our friends, the Aguirre’s; a family of rock stars, passionate about Jesus and Jewish feasts & celebrations, fly fishing and designers/owners/operators of a really cool brand in Park City Utah called Park City Originals, aka PCO.

We met Allan Aguirre and his family at Cornerstone Music Festival in 2011, just before we bought our bus. We approached them at the festival to ask advice on buses verses RV’s. Allan gave us the run down on expensive breakdowns that his bus had cost him but was pretty convincing that a bus really was the way to go. We walked away that day with more clarity about what we were looking for and also hoped to connect with he and his family again down the line.

Last week, two years later, we rolled into Park City and the Aguirre’s welcomed us with a night of pizza, intense doctrinal conversation followed by a relaxing glass of wine on the porch overlooking the horizon of the mountains and stars.  The next day we enjoyed a day of fly fishing on the Mid-Provo with our guide, Allan. This would be our first time fly fishing and we couldn’t have had a better day for it. The sun was shining, the water brisk and Allan was a fantastic guide, encouraging yet firm, explaining the customs and the rhythm of the sport.

Later that evening we performed at Minor Park on Main street for all of the summer tourists and passers-by. When our heads hit the pillow, we were ready!

The rest of our weekend was spend sharing in song and community at the Park City Vineyard, exploring the city and hanging out at the PCO booth at the Park Silly Sunday Market.

This is definitely a town worth re-visiting and we look forward to seeing our new friends again.

This Land Is…

This is what we’ve learned. And this is how we’ve understood it. This is a story we feel is worth re-telling. For those who have ears…

It’s about a fella named Tim DeChristopher verses the United States Government.

Hearing this story as a fellow US. Citizen was eye opening. Hearing it as a mother, was heartbreaking and yet invoked a sense of pride.

This is an paraphrase from a website called peacefuluprising.org which tells his story better than I can.

“From West Virginia, Tim came to Utah in his early 20s to work as a wilderness guide for at-risk and troubled youth. In 2008 as a student of Economics, Tim attended a Symposium at the University of Utah, where he was greatly moved and galvanized by Dr. Terry Root, a scientist for the International Panel on Climate Change and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dr. Root explained to the audience that elements of the climate crisis were already irreversible and that many species, natural wonders and bioregions were in imminent peril. Her words haunted Tim, and dramatically changed his personal worldview.

While Tim was taking his finals, advocates for Utah’s wilderness like Robert Redford and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) were attempting to bring attention to a controversial auction of Utah public lands, orchestrated by the outgoing Bush Administration. The auction included parcels adjacent to natural resources like Canyonlands National Park. SUWA and other regional advocates brought a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management in efforts to halt the auction pending further review and public comment. Through no fault of SUWA or their allies, the lawsuit could not settle the issue prior to the auction.

On December 19^th, Tim finished his last final exam and went to the protest that SUWA and others had organized outside of the auction. On arrival and with no prior plan of action, Tim decide to enter the building where the auction was held and approached the registration desk. When asked if he was there to bid, Tim made a quick decision. He registered as Bidder 70 and entered the auction.

Tim intended to stand up and make a speech or create some other kind of disruption. Once inside, he waited quietly with his bidder paddle lowered, until he saw a friend from his church openly weeping at the sterile transfer of beloved red rock lands away from the public trust and into the hands of energy giants. It was then that Tim decided to act.

At first, Tim simply pushed up the parcels’ prices (some starting as low as two dollars per acre, and were ultimately sold for $240 per acre). Once almost half of the parcels had been sold to oil and gas companies, Tim felt he could no longer bear to lose any more public lands. Tim bid on and won every remaining parcel, until he was recognized as an outlier and escorted from the auction.

Once it was revealed that Tim did not have the intent or the means to pay for the parcels he won, the auction erupted in chaos. Because Tim won so many parcels and inflated the prices of so many others, the auction had to be shut down. The incoming administration took office before the auction could be rescheduled. Upon review of the parcels in question, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar dismissed the auction, declaring that the BLM had cut corners and broken many of its own rules, including a crucial statute requiring all federal agencies to take the impacts on our climate into account prior to auctioning off public lands for the purpose of energy development.

Tim’s action garnered a great deal of media and public attention, and catalyzed an overwhelming influx of support and applause for his creative, effective, and nonviolent act of civil disobedience, which ultimately safeguarded thousands of acres of Utah public lands.

Although Utah’s public lands were safe, Tim’s action on December 19^th radically changed the course of his life. After the current administration decided to indict Tim, despite the confirmed auction’s illegality, Tim took his message to the widest possible audience to bring attention to the desperate need for effective action to combat the climate crisis.

It took the federal government more than two years to convict and sentence Tim. The trial was delayed a total of nine times by the Prosecution. Federal Judge Dee Benson dismissed Tim’s initial defense (the “Necessity Defense,” claiming that Tim’s crime was the lesser of two evils when weighed against the threats posed by the illegal auction). The Defense’s assertion of Selective Prosecution (as no other bidder had ever been indicted for failing to pay for parcels at an auction) was also dismissed. The threat of climate catastrophe that motivated Tim was banned from the courtroom and kept from the ears of the jury, as were the fact that Tim managed to raised adequate funds for initial payments on the parcels after the auction; the fact of the auction’s confirmed illegality; and the dismissal of multiple parcels.

Despite the multiple rescheduled dates, climate activists, organizers, and advocates from all over the country came to Salt Lake City for Tim’s trial to demonstrate their solidarity with a brave young man willing to offer up his own future to fight for the future of our planet.

On March 3, 2011, after hours of jury deliberation, Tim was convicted of two federal felonies: one count of false representation, and one count of violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act.

On July 26^th, 2011, Tim was sentenced to two years in federal prison. In the pre-sentencing report, the Prosecution openly admitted that Tim himself was not a threat to society or at risk to reoffend; the stated purpose of the sentence was to deter other activists from taking similar action to further the climate movement. In his final statement to the Judge, Tim said that he understood why the Prosecution saw him as a threat. “[My message] may indeed be threatening to the power structure,” he said. “The message is about recognizing our interconnectedness. The message is that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited. Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.”

After his sentence was issued, Tim was removed immediately from the courtroom and taken into the custody of federal agents. 26 people were arrested outside the Salt Lake City courthouse, and 26 solidarity actions happened at federal courthouses throughout the United States.

Tim’s conclusion to his final statement to the courtroom at his sentencing hearing crystallized his own personal stake in that commitment:

“You can steer my commitment to a healthy and just world if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.””

Rulers rise and fall. Our elegance is not to a government system but to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. We are thankful and inspired by Tim’s willingness to sacrifice for the good of us all. We are thankful to share in the woes and the joy.

“Those people are your people are my people are you people are us people!” ~The Hollands!

Secrets that the Mountains Holds

It’s one thing to see a documentary or read an article about an injustice and all together another to meet someone who is or has gone through the fire. To hear their story of oppression, discrimination, banishment, and persecution, to share in the burden. It stirs such primal emotion.

Pulling into Salt Lake City the beauty of the mountains deceive us. There is a eery tone, a subtle offense in the air. Secrets. The clouds hang low, as if the mountains are whispering those secrets of abuse and corruption to the heavens. We have learned much from our visit to this area. Much about a people who traveled west, following a charismatic leader and all that can happen when one man has to much power. There is a distorted law that formed and twisted thinking that justifies secrets that rape the soul and kill. We live in a time where most religion is viewed as culturally sacred. Meaning, the religion itself might be totally wack, but because it’s gone on for a long period of time it’s now a culture and that culture should be preserved, respected and tolerated. And yet, as we meet folks who have experienced betrayal and persecution by their so called “family” of religious organization there is a feeling that rises up. A primal feeling… Trying to put my finger on it. Oh, yes… RAGE!

Paul says it this way, in Galatians, that by embracing a variant message the people loose freedom. Cursed, he says, be anyone who turns the message of Christ on it’s head, even an angel from heaven.

Freedom is a delicate and subtle gift, easily perverts and often squandered. And, how quickly we can move from freedom to the “law.” We rise up and fight for freedom. Freedom comes but along with it a sense of control, a taste of power which often finds the rebel as the oppressor.

Here is the test. Freedom is the gage. If freedom is squelched, we respond with opposition. When freedom is restored we hold on loosely, gently and with humility.