Solace in the Desert

Jonathan T. Bailey is a photographer and conservationist who specializes in rock art. His work has contributed to the preservation of areas like the Bears Ears National Monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the Uintah Basin, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Since 2013, he has partnered with the Utah Rock Art Research Association to record and protect Emery County’s fragile archaeological resources. He is most recently the author of When I Was Red Clay (August 2022) and The Greater San Rafael Swell (Spring 2022) co-authored with Stephen Strom. His work has appeared in numerous places such as Landscape Photography Magazine, NBC News, Arizona Highways, and High Country News. Originally from Emery County, Utah, he now lives in Tucson, Arizona, with his partner, Aaron.

When I Was Red Clay

Bailey Images

Science Moab: Can you speak to the meaning behind the colors of the desert that you talk about in your book?

Bailey: Red is a color that I had a really hard time with as a kid, part of that being sensory related. I would specifically turn dolls away because the cheeks were really red, or hide objects that were red, because I just really hated the color. But it also took on meaning as it was my father’s favorite color. But as the book says, most of my loves are also red, red rock, and its red pigment. The dealing with color is also a metaphor for reconciling the relationship of myself and with my former faith and my father, and the relationships throughout my life. Yellow has been the color I always see the most and in the smallest quantities. It’s a seasonal color. In the mountains above Ferron, where I grew up, come spring, you would see these blankets of yellow, precious but abundant. I mentioned very early in the book, desert trumpets, which are one of my favorite plants. And they have these very delicate little yellow flowers, which is why I chose it. That’s my favorite color growing up. The obvious explanation for turquoise is that it’s turquoise itself, the mineral. But also, I’ve been walking ancient trails down here that were used to transport marine shells and pigments. Interestingly, some of those shells that pass through here have been found all the way up in Ferron. While walking these trails, I see these fragments of blue pigment occasionally. And it encapsulates my associations with the color: it’s the color of water and they’re traveling between the ocean to the middle of Utah. 

Science Moab: Can you share about the coyote gourd and what anachronistic plants are?

Bailey: So, the coyote gourd is a plant that occurs from Southern Utah all the way through Sonora. Basically, it’s a plant that adapted to animals that no longer exist, like mammoths or extinct versions of javelina. There are a number of plants that evolved to things like mammoths, but their main means of propagation have gone extinct. They use other means of propagation, which are ecologically expensive, such as water dispersal, or rodents taking their seeds into their dens. It leaves these open ended relationships in that these plants only exist because of these animals that no longer exist. We have a lot of examples in our fridges, such as avocados, which evolved to large extinct mammals, but exist primarily now because of humans.

Science Moab: Yeah, back to your work with all the conservation. We talked earlier a year or so ago about your work with photographing rock art for conservation, things like that. And one thing you mentioned in the book is your work with mustn’t touch it. Badlands, which is kind of sin between the San Rafael swell and the northern part of Capitol Reef, if I’m correct, right. BLM was considering leasing that area for oil and gas exploration and you did some work and pleaded with him not to do that. One of you go into that just a little bit.

Bailey: We have worked on that central area of Utah for probably the last 10 years. Over this period of time, there have been something like 500,000 acres that have been proposed for oil and gas, and we’ve so far successfully deferred all of those leases. It’s an incredible area, and very diverse in the ways that it evolves as you move through it. You have a lot of endemic plants that have adapted to this very sandy environment. So you have Asclepias ruthiae [Ruth milkweed] that is just like a map with these purple star-like flowers. You also have really unusual plants called Colorado feverfew that attach themselves to the top parts of cliffs. These are really high wind areas, but they stay at the surface of the ground where there’s effectively no wind, and you have an endemic species of cactus with these white flowers. But then you start going northward, and you have rich archaeology, immense amounts of dinosaur bones and tracks. And you also have other rare plants such as Ferron’s milkvetch. It’s an incredible area. And one of the things I wanted to do with this book and with a lot of the work I do is emphasize how valuable these places and resources are.