In November, a week before Thanksgiving, I decided to head to Utah to ride in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Grand Staircase, for short). It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, prompted by the knowledge that Trump was going to severely reduce the size of the monument.
Riding the Continental Divide this summer made me painfully realize that wilderness areas were all but gone. Any attempt to try to preserve any vestige of a wilderness should be honored. Trump however, doesn’t care about that. What he wants is coal lying beneath the ground in the Grand Staircase.
I saw black tinged soil in a number of places. I didn’t take any photos because I didn’t realize what they were until I stopped at a camp outfitter store in the town of Escalante at the end of my trip. “Oh, what you saw was coal,” the owner said. “You actually see traces of it on the surface.”
Grand Staircase was a beautiful wilderness. I rode for days without seeing a single person. You see mountains, buttes and spires which show off eons of the earth’s life.
The bands represent geological eras, which are studied by paleontologists.
I biked around the area known as the Kaiparowits Plateau. That area has been known to be rich with fossils. For example, many fossil parts from Tyrannosaurus Rex have been discovered here. 
As part of the National Monument, the area has been saved from exploitation for the benefit of science. Decades ago, before the area was named a national monument, there were plans for a coal mining facilities here. But there was so much opposition that the plan was shelved. We may soon see coal operations again.
Native Americans also hold various sites in Grand Staircase as sacred. Nearby Bears’ Ears National Monument (which I did not ride in) is also a place holding many sacred sites, both of which Trump reduced severely.
“The history of our Indigenous ancestors lives in these sacred places. Today’s action to reduce Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante endangers our freedom of religion, our histories and our communities,” stated Jefferson Keel (source), president of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Areas that hold the pristine form of what the Earth has given us has been and should be considered sacred.
As of December 4, Trump negated all this (New York Times). It was a sad day.
When I rode Grand Staircase in November, I knew that the day of reduction was coming soon. The solitary ride through the Grand Staircase wilderness was wonderful and refreshing But, with Trump’s action in the background, it was also a sad ride.
(Click on any photo for full view.)
