From the depths of dense conifer in Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest, the serenity of sunset is broken long enough for Joe Barrow to bear out the premise that it isn’t really camping until someone is cursing the tent poles. The barrel-chested Barrow drops a few precision F-bombs off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with the deftness of a drunken sailor, then tacks on a soft chuckle as the tent assumes a posture leaning somewhere shy of full attention.
Barrow is indeed a sailor, or was until 2005, spending nearly four years on the USS George Washington and surviving multiple deployments to the Middle East as others died before his eyes during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He would have served longer, were he not diagnosed with brain cancer the very day he received his orders to report for Navy SEAL training.
And he’s sober now. A by-product less of the two subsequent brain surgeries than the aftermath of a string of PTSD-clouded decisions that landed him before a sympathetic yet stern judge who promised to throw the book at Barrow if he ever landed in the back seat of another police car.
“Like the song says, I found Jesus on the jailhouse floor,” Barrow says, adding that the rock-bottom experience sent him somewhat inexplicably on a track of outdoor exploration that allowed him to reconnect with himself through the healing power of nature. “I’m grateful for that happening because otherwise I’d probably be dead.”
Since his last cancer surgery in 2013, Barrow’s revived spirit has carried him incrementally farther into the outdoors, including, on this October weekend, a 1,700-mile drive from his hometown of Cincinnati to Flagstaff, where he joined a makeshift platoon of like-minded veterans and service members for some wilderness salvation.
The mission of the overnight hike is two-fold, focused on both place and personnel. The men have assembled as guests of the Sierra Club’s emerging Military Outdoors program designed to offer service members, veterans and their families exposure to nature and its benefits with the ambition of inspiring a new generation of club leaders following in the footsteps of stalwart environmental defender and U.S. Army veteran David Brower.
The choice of venues is no accident. In addition to being the place where Brower and the Sierra Club arguably established their environmental identities, the Grand Canyon has recently reemerged as a hot-button conservation issue that has come to a boil with the introduction of the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument Act by Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva just a few days after the Military Outdoors outing.
Monumental Mission
The proposed 1.7 million-acre monument, which would buffer the existing 1.2 million-acre Grand Canyon National Park, is a mix of canyons, desert, grasslands and forest. With the support of Native American tribal leaders in the region, Grijalva’s bill is designed to prevent future uranium mining within the watershed, preserve cultural resources and sacred tribal sites, reconnect fragmented wildlife corridors and protect the region’s last stand of old growth southwestern ponderosa pine.
The Greater Grand Canyon Heritage Act seeks to build upon the original plan proposed by President Teddy Roosevelt when he initially declared the Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908. Even then, T.R.’s proclamation riled the local mining and tourist industries keen on developing one of our nation’s most treasured landscapes, resulting in a monument only about half the size of the current Grand Canyon National Park. The Grand Canyon Enlargement Act didn’t become law until 1975, under President Gerald Ford, and an increasingly vocal coalition argues that it, too, fell short of completely protecting the Grand Canyon: Four uranium mines continue to operate within the watershed and thousands of additional claims await the expiration of a 20-year new mining moratorium.
Passage of the bill would permanently ban new mining operations while promising to maintain current commercial and recreational hunting opportunities, [as well as/and] grazing and water rights. Although unlikely to be heard in Congress, the bill creates a template that President Barack Obama could consider signing through his authority under the Antiquities Act, just as he did with the new Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado.
Several Republicans and the mining industry are fighting the proposal. The Arizona Game and Fish Department has also voiced its opposition, although several former Game and Fish Commissioners have signed off in support.
Core Values
Leading the charge from the conservation community is Kim Crumbo, a Vietnam veteran who earned a Bronze Star during four years and more than 70 combat missions as a member of Navy SEAL Team One shortly after the special operations unit had been invented. Following the war, Crumbo subsequently swapped uniforms as a Grand Canyon National Park ranger and eventual river guide, befriending the likes of Edward Abbey while making more than 120 three-week trips through the 277-mile park.
The Utah resident now heads up the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, serves as volunteer co-lead for the 2.4-million member Sierra Club’s monument effort and participates in a coalition of conservation groups focused on wildlife connectivity known as the Wildlands Network.
From his perspective, America’s service members, past and present, represent perhaps the greatest untapped resource in the modern conservation movement.
“When I was in Vietnam, I was under no illusion that I was fighting for the Constitution, but I was fighting for America. And I was fighting for this stuff, these public lands,” Crumbo says while meandering through the proposed monument on the North Canyon Trail. “I think that this is why I am an American. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Constitution. But we have the obligation to defend this stuff.”
To Crumbo, places like the Grand Canyon, and the public lands of the surrounding watershed, serve as the physical representation of American democracy and offer a tangible opportunity for him and other members of the military to continue their service.
“It’s surprising how few people in the conservation movement have direct military experience,” he says. “So I think it’s really important to get veterans involved because this is their land. There’s a spiritual value here that resonates with human beings regardless of their background, and I think a veteran is in a unique place to appreciate that.”
Perhaps equally surprising are the ranks of those in the conservation movement who do have direct military experience. Brower, the Sierra Club’s first executive director and a three-time board member, is lesser known among civilians for his military service as a commissioned officer and World War II training of the Army’s elite 10th Mountain Infantry Division. He too earned a Bronze Star and served as a major in the Army Reserve for many years after the war ended.
The Frontline
That history lesson has not been lost on the club’s current National President, Aaron Mair, who spent four years in the U.S. Navy and holds a special affinity for the Military Outdoors program and its director, former Army captain and Denver-based Veteran’s Expeditions co-founder Stacy Bare. Mair’s vision for reconnecting the landscape extends beyond the greater Grand Canyon.
“Is it something new? No, absolutely not. When during WWII, our nation needed to learn alpine skills, they turned to the Sierra Club and brother David Brower. At one point in time, being a patriot, being a soldier, being a protector of the environment, was a core value. And I think it got silent for a while. And it’s been silent for perhaps maybe 30-40 years. This program allows us to bring that back and break that silence,” Mair says. “But more importantly, the power that veterans bring is that in respecting and protecting nature they can become our most powerful advocates of conservation. When we talk about preserving and protecting our wild spaces, because they can restore our souls, what better advocates for conservation than our frontline patriots who are now frontline patriots for the environment?
“When we say we are defending the homeland, this soil and this conservation is symbolic of that patriotism. Protecting this space, here, at home, is as serious as protecting it abroad. These things are inseparable. So it is a natural fit, a natural setting for a veteran to affiliate to be a conservation steward. You don’t have to be into politics. You don’t have to be into any other parts of the organization. But my best conservationists, the best lover of the serenity of nature, the best steward who will defend, doggedly, is a vet.”
Veterans like Crumbo and Military Outdoors volunteer coordinator Rob Vessels, who spent five years with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, admit that there are cultural barriers to be overcome for many service members to turn the corner to public lands advocacy, including an inherent distrust of government and, frankly, a somewhat negative introduction to the outdoors from boot camp to deployment. So they’re offering their brothers and sisters in the armed forces a new post, and vets like Barrow are accepting the opportunity to turn that corner in the Grand Canyon, and beyond.
“I’ve never done anything like this. But a big part of me coming out of the service, I felt like I was pulled out of something I was passionate about. Out here I feel I can immerse myself into something I’m passionate about. We need more land like this so future generations can discover it,” Barrow says. “I think nature could definitely get me back to the person I was before the cancer, mentally sound and intelligent. I come out here and I feel that way again. It feels like I’m in my perfect environment and I can be myself. Just, myself.”
Scott Willoughby is the former Outdoors Editor for The Denver Post. His coverage of outdoor recreation, land management and conservation issues spans more than 20 years.
