S4E26: Episode 100 | Morgan Sjogren's Tales of Beauty, Rage, and Uranium

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555

0:00:25 - (Joe Geoffrey): think the deserts are barren wastelands? Think again. It’s time for 90 miles from needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:46 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you Joe and welcome to this hundredth episode of 90 Miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast. I, as always, am your host, Chris Clarke and we recorded a lot of really wonderful things on the evening of Thursday, August 7th. So much great work from half a dozen wonderful activists, journalists and writers. And because we have so much good content, we are breaking this episode up into six pieces rather than have an hour and 45-minute episode. We're considering all of this the hundredth episode in our hearts, but we are numbering them as distinct episodes to make the podcast distributors happy.

0:01:21 - (Chris Clarke): So don't be too confused. Some of them will be a little shorter than usual, others will be a little bit longer. I am just pleased as hell with what people brought to the table last night. And we continue with this chapter, which features the wonderful writer Morgan Sjogren from the Four Corners area, who called into our meeting from a campsite in Bears Ears National Monument. And that explains a little bit of the tweakiness of the sound quality, but the content quality is just top notch.

0:01:51 - (Chris Clarke): Let's throw it to Morgan here, in part because she's like a time zone ahead of us and also because I know that she's going to want to get back to her surround where she is. Morgan, where are you?

0:02:04 - (Morgan Sjogren): Hi, everyone. I am here in Bears Ears National Monument. Actually, technically Glen Canyon NRA, overlooking the San Juan river and the Goosenecks tonight.

0:02:15 - (Chris Clarke): Well, thanks.

0:02:16 - (Morgan Sjogren): Great to be on the show. Yeah. And how was my sound? That was the big question.

0:02:20 - (Chris Clarke): Your sound is better than I expected. That's great. So, formal intro here. Morgan Sjogren writes about Western lands and water through a lens of history, culture, science and adventure. She's author of Path of A Walkthrough, Colliding Legacies of Glen Canyon, which is Torrey House Press 2023. That book was a 2025 Utah Book Award winner and Library of Congress great reads from great places selection.

0:02:46 - (Chris Clarke): Morgan's written for publications ranging from Archaeology Southwest, which is awesome, Arizona Highways, which if I die without that on my resume of places I've written for, I will have done things wrong. So that's lovely. Fast Company, Runner's World, and Sierra Magazine. Just to show the breadth of places that wanted to run, Morgan's work. She has been supported by a 2022 Water Desk Grant for reporting on the Colorado river and a 2024 Charles Red center for Western Studies Independent Research and Creative Works Award.

0:03:21 - (Chris Clarke): Morgan, thank you so much for joining us.

0:03:23 - (Morgan Sjogren): Wonderful. It's good to be here in community with you all in different corners of the desert or places where you love the desert. From tonight I'd like to read an excerpt from my latest book, Path of a Walkthrough Colliding Legacies of Glen Canyon, and the topic is uranium mining, and I felt like that was appropriate for this evening given data centers and their reliance on energy and the energy emergency that is kind of spearheading some of the attacks on public land with this administration.

0:03:52 - (Morgan Sjogren): So with that I will read. Red dust swirls and dances through the purple streaked Chinle Formation crowned by pinnacles of rescued Wingate sandstone. The only footprints through here are my own and those of a few hundred cattle. Perpetually howling wind reminds me that solitude is a state of mind even in this desolate canyon. The gusts briefly pause. Silence sit heavy on my chest, amplifying the rhythm of my thumping heart.

0:04:20 - (Morgan Sjogren): Within the passage, I use a rope to lower my pack off several drops before down climbing. The thought of doing this alone rattles my nerves. Safely past a difficult section, I yelp, letting my joyful relief echo back to me, only to trip and grab a cactus with my hand. At the bottom of the squeeze, an intoxicating geological rainbow engulfs me, purples, pinks, teals, and yellows. Walking through the thin, eroded passageways of hardened mud mounds. The beauty is a devilish reminder that this is uranium country and that radioactive material is abound in these soils.

0:04:54 - (Morgan Sjogren): This landscape is both scarred by humans and largely ignored by them is a place most people and animals only pass through. Unless, of course, you are seeking to be alone, in which case it's an excellent choice. Old tire tracks fading into the sand guide my retreat from the civilized world deeper into the desert. The word desert, both noun and verb, is derived from the Latin desertum, which means to abandon, to leave, forsake, give up, leave. In the lurch, acts of desertion arrive in sudden eruption.

0:05:24 - (Morgan Sjogren): The void of connection, physical and emotional, haunts me with a knot in my stomach that does not go away until I accept that there may never be an explanation, closure, or repair. Away from the desert, I temporarily become the abandoner, and I exist in a trance where my body is present, but my vision is sandstoned. Only to return where I belong can remedy the schism. But why Here. How can a desolate radioactive canyon possibly reside along the path to self-discovery?

0:05:51 - (Morgan Sjogren): This is no Walden Pond. I can smell the loneliness that lingers here. Perhaps I am drawn to the sense of anonymity nearly guaranteed in places perceived as damaged. Finding beauty in the chaotic refuse brings me hope in a world that often appears doomed. I cannot help but contemplate abandonment here. Almost everyone with a reason to spend time in Red Canyon eventually left. The earliest inhabitants of Glen Canyon were present over 10,000 years ago.

0:06:17 - (Morgan Sjogren): Nomadic people foraged, hunted, gathered and left minimal traces of their presence. When the ancestral Pueblo inhabited the river corridor and its tributaries, they developed more sedentary residences and the use of pottery, tools, jewelry and painted images on sandstone. During this period, a hardy soul or family built a solitary two story dwelling near the mouth of the canyon, perhaps to get away from the crowds of more populated zones.

0:06:43 - (Morgan Sjogren): By AD 1280, almost everyone, including the residents of Red Canyon, migrated from what is now Bears Ears due to climate change and other associated factors. This was not abandonment. The Ancestral Pueblo still dwelled here. Sparse human presence in Glen Canyon continued also with the Paiute, Ute and Dine, who continue to utilize this area, but not as a major habitation zone. Dine Elder Leo Manheimer has told me stories about crossing the San Juan river to this canyon to hunt deer with medicine man Buck Navajo.

0:07:14 - (Morgan Sjogren): In Red Canyon, I spot a sweat hogan tucked away in a wash. Outside the door of the hogan is a magazine dated 2021, a mark of how past and present reside here together. In the 1890s, the Glen Canyon gold rush ushered in foolhardy prospectors. Mining activity picked up in the 1890s and the dream of striking it rich hung onto its muddy shores into the next century. Glen Cannon's gold came in the form of fine flakes deposited in sand and silt on riverbanks and bars surrounding the main channel.

0:07:46 - (Morgan Sjogren): Because the gold was so hard to collect, nobody exactly hit the jackpot. The most industrious enterprise was Robert Brewster Stanton's Hoscanini Company, which built a large gold dredge in the river in 1897. How cool. The hummingbird moth in the camera.

0:08:02 - (Chris Clarke): Oh, nice.

0:08:03 - (Morgan Sjogren): The dredging failed to harness much of the Colorado River's gold, and he only made 66 bucks on his $100,000 investment. The dredge was left to rust until Lake Powell reclaimed it. Prospectors later learned that uranium was much more plentiful and profitable. Uranium boom mid-century Bolstered by the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union after World War II ended, the industry was heavily subsidized by the Atomic energy commission between 1940 and 1960, which generated jobs for people on the Navajo Nation and in San Juan County.

0:08:35 - (Morgan Sjogren): This very dirt road I am walking on is the result of uranium industry, where roads were created to access mining operations and claims. It's not even noon and the red dirt and dark Wingate walls around me are radiating heat. I contemplate a conversation with the cows, suggesting that they revolt and follow in the footsteps of the Ancestral Pueblo hermits and miners and get the hell out of here. Uranium profitability barely hung on in the later 20th century until another resurgence occurred in the 1980s.

0:09:04 - (Morgan Sjogren): Today, uranium prices are down and the mines in the Four Corners have largely been abandoned without cleanup. But some are ready for action if the price of yellowcake ore increases again. Red Canyon and the area surrounding it were strategically left out of the 2016 Bears Ears National Monument designation. However, including it would not have stopped mining because preexisting claims are grandfathered into new national monuments anyway.

0:09:27 - (Morgan Sjogren): This zone encompasses the Daneros Mine, the region's largest and most recently active uranium mine. It is owned by Canada based Energy Fuels, Inc. The largest producer of uranium in the United States. Although it has been sitting idle since 2012, the mine remains on standby, ready to resume operations as soon as uranium becomes economically viable. Uranium mining poses extensive threats to people, wildlife and water sources long after the underground work is done.

0:09:55 - (Morgan Sjogren): Defunct mines that are not clean up continue to pollute groundwater and they release radioactive dust into the air on windy days. Both forms of exposure are known to cause cancer and reproductive organ damage in surrounding communities. Indigenous homelands are among the most affected. There are over 500 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. After decades of uranium related health issues, the Navajo tribal government now opposes permitting these activities on or near tribal lands.

0:10:23 - (Morgan Sjogren): The most recent data from the Pulitzer center estimates that 85% of Navajo homes are currently contaminated by uranium. Adjacent to the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation and the boundaries of Bears Ears, White Mill Mesa, constructed in 1980, is the last of its kind in the United States. The mill, also owned and operated by Energy Fuels, possesses and stores £700 million of radioactive waste. White Mill Mesa's uncovered radioactive waste storage system emits 10 times more radon and carcinogenic gas than if it was covered, as it should be. In adherence to EPA requirements.

0:10:56 - (Morgan Sjogren): The mill is authorized to accept radioactive waste from across the United States as far away as Estonia and Japan. Walking through the arid badlands, it's clear why this is not a tourism hotspot. Who wants to peruse the relics of defunct mines and walk among the cattle subsisting on this waterless hellscape? The very things that are scarring the landscape are unintentionally protecting it from recreation impacts.

0:11:20 - (Morgan Sjogren): It plays nicely into the hands of extraction industry as it silently gets away with environmental murder. This is what drew my interest out here. In February 2018, I filed the first mining claim in the area that was newly excluded from Bears Ears National Monument. Joined by my then-boyfriend, we had no interest in mining the earth minerals. We wanted to extract an experience. the monkey wrenching scenario we dreamt up was to race big corporations staking mining claims, hoping to block off sections removed from Bears Ears.

0:11:49 - (Morgan Sjogren): If successful, we hypothesize that larger conservation groups and eco conscious outdoor brands could use the same method to collectively protect these sensitive zones that are susceptible to future mining. Staking a claim is legal so long as all of the procedures, protocols and payments are followed, most of which were drafted up in 1872. The archaic laws governing this process raise important questions of efficiency and relevance in the 21st century.

0:12:14 - (Morgan Sjogren): Given the 150-year-old law, we both thought it would be fun to go to the BLM offices to dress up like 1800s prospectors in old leather boots, dirty work pants, straw hats, flannel shirts and a coating of dirt on our faces. Sitting in the BLM office, the Department Head of Energy and Minerals looked me straight in the eye with a smile on his face and said, look, I know you're not uranium miners, and then handed us the paperwork and a pamphlet the BLM gives to anyone interested in staking a mining claim, from hobbyists to mega corporations.

0:12:46 - (Morgan Sjogren): It took us a week to file a 20-acre mining claim on the edge of a mesa overlooking a sandstone canyon. We chose the spot for its location in a zone at high risk for new mining claims, using ice axes, climbing ropes and a PVC pipe as our monument. Post staking the claim itself turned out to be the easiest part. The modern BLM software used to locate available claim sites was not as user friendly as the 1872 law.

0:13:11 - (Morgan Sjogren): To finalize the claim, we paid our fees and had our paperwork notarized with the county clerk. A few months later, the BLM deemed our mine too large and mailed us a tiny paper ruler to remeasure it: a real “fuck you.” Nice try, considering the maximum size for a placer mine is 20 acres. Then the BLM declared the mine obsolete by sending 10 copies of the same letter in the mail. If we wanted to keep our mine, we would have to start over.

0:13:37 - (Morgan Sjogren): I also learned that an increase in mining helps the BLM determine how the land is managed and what uses are prioritized. So we abandoned the prospect. This is not to say everyone else did. 14 new mining claims have been staked within the excluded Bears Ears boundaries since 2018, six of these in 2021. None of these mines are active, and there has not been a revived uranium boom in the United States.

0:14:00 - (Morgan Sjogren): [It's two years since this came out.] I've always been proud that the first of these new mining claims was staked by two environmental activists, although I may never grow accustomed to that label. Afterward, I wrote an article about the experience. Journalists From Reuters and HuffPost interviewed US and featured our efforts by bringing attention to the mining threats to Bears Ears. We even made a television appearance on NBC Left Field.

0:14:23 - (Morgan Sjogren): But we were not exactly mining experts. But through the experience we came to know a bit more than someone sitting in a cubicle on the other side of the country. Though we walked away from the mine, the media did not. HuffPost continued to mention our claim in just about every news story about mineral extraction in Utah, complete with a link to our former mailing address. Other toxic side effects included more online harassment, some claiming that our efforts were merely a publicity stunt which excavated any common ground on which a productive conversation between all sides could be held.

0:14:55 - (Morgan Sjogren): As mining fizzled in the 1800s and led into the 20th century, recreation ignited in Glen Canyon, especially among Colorado river runners who enjoyed a brief heyday before the dam construction. Voters who made Red Canyon home for a night visited the area, including folk singer and author Katie Lee, known as the Goddess of Glen Canyon. Her passion and intimate connection with this river corridor ignited her lifelong devotion to it.

0:15:19 - (Morgan Sjogren): Best lover I ever had was that river. When they drowned her river and parts of Red Canyon, as she called it she mourned the loss deeply. With pounding heart, I walked to where the cliff dropped to the river and fell to my knees. After that, Lee refused to run any rivers. She grieved the loss of Glen Cannon for the rest of her 98-year life, channeling her rage into a compact to protect the Colorado river and the desert forever.

0:15:45 - (Morgan Sjogren): The lonesome road I walk now in Red Canyon ends in Lake Powell, a monument to the way humans are abandoning their relationship with the natural world. Abuse slips through the cracks of this disconnection is a cycle of human belief in their right to control nature any different. Every 30 minutes or so, sand fills my shoes. I stop walking to dump the excess out. It's as if the grains of sand are begging me to carry them away from here to journey with me to natural bridges, to journey with me instead of clinging with and cling to my souls. Most will be left where they belong, right here.

0:16:17 - (Morgan Sjogren): Though the accumulation of sand never ceases, ignoring it is unsustainable. I must repeatedly pour it out of my shoes only for the process to begin all over again. Like everything else in life that adds weight without purpose, I leave only sand and footprints as I walk away. We could all stand to desert the things that do not serve the land, wildlife, other humans, and even ourselves.

0:16:40 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you so much, Morgan. That was alternately beautiful and enraging and then beautiful again. That was really, really a good read. I should note that any book mentioned here tonight, if you give me a couple of days, will be available for sale on the 90 Miles from Needles website. We go through bookshop.org, which allows you to buy from your favorite locally owned non billionaire, non-space faring bookstore.

0:17:07 - (Chris Clarke): And Morgan, can you tell us a little bit about your Substack and where people can follow your writing? I've been finding it just absolutely wonderful for the last few weeks since I found it.

0:17:19 - (Morgan Sjogren): Yeah, thanks for reading there. Yes. So my Substack is Wild Words and it's basically dispatches from my life in the desert, which kind of roams around canyon country in the Southwest. And I blend my constant wandering with my constant rage with what's going on in public lands and environmental policies, but also the constant state of awe and wonder that the desert brings. And so I would love for you all to join me through Wild Words. I usually post about once a week unless I'm out longer.

0:17:51 - (Morgan Sjogren): Thank you so much for having me.

0:17:52 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you so much for joining us. And that's it for this chapter of our 100th episode. Thanks to everyone who's contributed to this, namely Mason Voehl, Morgan Sjogren, Cameron Mayer, David Morales, Ruben Martinez, and Ruth Nolan. Thanks as well to our voiceover guy, Joe Geoffrey, and our podcast artist, Martin Mancha. Our Nature Sounds recordist, Fred Bell will be showing up in our 101st episode. I know I said that he would be showing up in our hundredth episode and I was mistaken. I apologize to Fred and to you.

0:18:31 - (Chris Clarke): Don't forget we only made it to 100 episodes because people supported what we're doing. If you like what we're doing and you want us to keep doing it, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate if you'd like to get us to Tucson and El Paso at the end of September to spread the word. That's 90 miles from needles.com elpaso thanks for listening. And here's to the next hundred episodes. Bye now.

0:18:56 - (Joe Geoffrey):  90 Miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.