earth notes

A couple years ago, a volunteer patrolling near Bluff, Utah, found a human-like figure pecked onto stone—rock art at least five times older than the Liberty Bell. The volunteer gasped to see that a thief had used a rock saw to try and cut out the panel. 

At age 82, Brantley Baird is among the nation’s oldest ranching vaqueros. He’s roamed the five-thousand-acre Rock Art Ranch near Winslow, Arizona, since 1945, when his parents leased it. Three years later, at age eleven, Baird found his first ancient ceramic pot there—the one prominently displayed in a photograph in the ranch’s museum.

In the late 1960s 20-something Ignacio Mesa dreamed of producing his own wine. Three decades later he began planting grapevines between the Mogollon Rim and the Verde Valley. Now, Clear Creek Vineyard and Winery is thriving.

The word pajarito means “little bird” in Spanish. That’s how the Pajarito Plateau in northern New Mexico got its name. But new research has found bird populations are crashing there—issuing a warning for the future of the Southwest. 

John Wesley Powell is famous for his 1869 journey down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. But before that expedition, Powell taught geology at Illinois State Normal University in the town of Normal, and was curator of the Illinois State Natural History Museum.