The Bears Ears

A Human History of America's Most Endangered Wilderness

By: David Roberts

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

A personal and historical exploration of the Bears Ears country and the fight to save a national monument.

The Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, created by President Obama in 2016 and eviscerated by the Trump administration in 2017, contains more archaeological sites than any other region in the United States. It's also a spectacularly beautiful landscape, a mosaic of sandstone canyons and bold mesas and buttes. This wilderness, now threatened by oil and gas drilling, unrestricted grazing, and invasion by Jeep and ATV, is at the center of the greatest environmental battle in America since the damming of the Colorado River to create Lake Powell in the 1950s.

In The Bears Ears, acclaimed adventure writer David Roberts takes listeners on a tour of his favorite place on Earth, as he unfolds the rich and contradictory human history of the 1.35 million acres of the Bears Ears domain. Weaving personal memoir with archival research, Roberts sings the praises of the outback he's explored for the last 25 years.

©2021 David Roberts (P)2021 Tantor

Very interesting history of the Bears Ears

Excellent history of the Bears Ears area . I enjoyed the author's passion and detailed stories about his trips to Cedar Mesa.

Narration was on point as well.

The topic jumped around

The topic the author was writing about seemed to jump around at times and didn't seem to flow very well. otherwise, I thought it was very good.

kinda of the same story's

Same stories hes already told in his other books. he need to write about hohokams or something.

A stroll through the Bears Ears in space and time

Anecdotal and personal. Took me a while to appreciate it because I was expecting a more "chronological" story, something the author warns the reader off in the introduction. A good listen, I cranked up the playback to 1.35x speed to give it some "snapp".

interesting and well written account

Excellent account of Bears Ears and the recorded and oral human history of the area.

Great book, insufferable narrator

He sounds like Captain Kirk on cocaine. He stops on every single word. Absolutely terrible.

A new obsession.

Thank you, for your eye-opening introduction into a place I had only heard about. Recently, my wife and I had the opportunity to explore our fascination with petroglyphs and pictographs around Moab, UT. After listening, I want to go back and see Cedar Mesa

End of an Era

Those of us who have been hiking, backpacking and trail running in the “greater Bears Ears region” for decades (for me, since the 1977) know what it’s like and what it’s become. National Monument status, as David Roberts poignantly explains, will inevitably change what we love, despite being the least bad of alternative scenarios for its longer-term protection. David’s love for the land comes through despite the sometimes meandering memoir, which is never dull. He’s already missed as is the Bears Ears of my own youthful days. Cherish David Roberts, who is at his best in this deeply personal book. Prayers for his family and other elders in this book, including Chéii (Grandpa) Willie Grayeyes. In 2005, rode horseback with Willie and other friends for two days on the Navajo Nation under the July sun. Willie had broken his leg five days before on an earlier section of this trail ride, where Navajo Nation Council delegates annually reenact the original convening of the Council in 1923. Rather than get of his horse and go to the hospital, Willie strapped his broken leg to a plywood board with bandanas and kept riding. That’s the kind of pluck and courage and love of life which, like David’s, keeps the rest of us strong.

This book will grab your mind and heart!!

What a fabulous weave of archeology, history and personal experience. If you didn’t love the Bears Ears and SE Utah area before you will after this book. A book that will stick with me for a long time. I also feel like I now know the author, who unfortunately passed around the time this book was published. Rest in peace among the ancients!!