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Josh Jackson | Longreads | June 12, 2025 | 5,262 words (19 minutes)
The BLM—short for the Bureau of Land Management—was established in 1946, when the Department of the Interior merged the General Land Office with the Grazing Service. Today, the BLM is one of four federal agencies that manage public land across the United States, and it manages an astonishing 245 million acres across the western states and Alaska. I was dumbfounded by this number. Two hundred and forty-five million acres? How on earth had I never heard of these lands?
Even the idea of “public lands” wasn’t a concept I fully understood. But as I learned more about them, I came to see public lands as something miraculous. When you consider our national zeal for owning private property, it is astounding we have set aside 618 million acres of federal land for the public. These are areas of land and water that are owned collectively by the citizens and managed by the federal government. The concept is worth reiterating: These lands are our common ground, a gift of seismic proportions that belongs to all of us. No matter your color, creed, or class, and even if you’ve never signed your name to a deed, you are a landowner. We are all landowners. Coming to terms with this endowment was a revelation.
Of course, there’s a deeper story behind how these lands became part of the federal domain, and it likely won’t surprise you to learn that it’s an undeniably ugly one. It didn’t take long for me to discover that these lands were systemically stolen from the hands of the Native Americans who had stewarded them for millennia before colonialism in different forms devastated their tribes. Through invasions, plagues, violence, coercion, bribery, war, and lopsided deals with the United States government, Indigenous groups and their ways of life were nearly obliterated. Behind every layer of history I peeled back was a heartbreaking story of loss.
The second distinction that sets BLM lands apart lies in how these leftover lands were perceived and treated. Once they were deemed unsuitable and/or unprofitable for homesteaders, developers, and other federal land agencies, their fate seemed inconsequential. As a result of this perceived inferiority, vast areas of those lands were then severely degraded through both overgrazing and unchecked extraction of coal, gas, oil, and various minerals. Our BLM lands, while managed by a federal agency, were not always protected by it.
BLM lands continue to face threats on all sides. A reconciliation bill currently in Congress proposes firing up to 20 percent of BLM staff and cutting $532 million from the agency’s budget by 2026—devastating blows to a workforce already stretched thin. Meanwhile, efforts to sell off our shared public lands are gaining ground. Some 540,000 acres across Nevada and Utah are on the chopping block, at risk of being handed over to the highest bidder.
Learning about such land-use imbalances and the fragility of these supposedly protected areas was a sobering wake-up call for me, and it intensified my desire to experience these lands firsthand. But despite my growing knowledge, I still struggled to find certain details about BLM land within California, including how curious visitors could access them and what we might find there. The lack of personal narratives made these lands feel distant and disconnected, as though they existed only in the dry facts of government websites. Stories have a way of breathing life into places, helping us connect on a deeper level, but in my BLM research, such accounts were either absent or merely footnotes in major narratives about the West. It was no wonder I hadn’t heard of these lands before.
If these so-called leftover lands had a story to tell, I wanted to play a small part in telling it. So, with camera in hand and notepad in pocket, I hit the road.
We were stuck. Absolutely, white-knuckle, bare-bones stuck.
To say we were in the middle of nowhere would have been an understatement. The closest town to our west was a full day’s walk. To our east, the nearest outpost was in Nevada, a marathon and a half away. And thanks to smoke from the 2021 Tamarack Fire blowing in from the north and the August daytime heat in the mid-80s, a long walk in either direction would have been a dreaded affair.
To make matters worse, dusk was coming to a close and a new-moon phase left us trapped in a state of complete darkness. Our phones, without reception, were reduced to flashlights.
It all happened on a gravel back road that proved to be a meandering path that tapered as we progressed down its length, like a funnel slowly squeezing us in. On one side of the road was a sandy streambed, and on the other were short hills of sagebrush and scattered rock formations that rose sharply in sporadic bursts.
We were headed toward a dispersed camping area I had found on an old map. Called Halfway Camp, it seemed like a promising setting for taking in the dark night sky. But as the road narrowed and transitioned from gravel to a sandy single lane, my anxiety spiked and I feared the terrain might be too challenging for both my two-wheel-drive van and my nerves.
Slowing the van to a crawl, I glanced over at my traveling companions, Sam and Paul. We had shared countless outdoor adventures, and among the three of us they were usually more optimistic about sketchy roads. For a few minutes, we debated whether to turn around or keep going. In the end, I won out, purely by virtue of being the driver.
This was not the first time I had ended up on an unpredictable road exploring BLM lands. After a few close calls on earlier trips, I decided to draft a set of ground rules to ensure future visits were smoother and safer. These rules included packing a shovel and several 2×6 boards (to help with stuck wheels) and following through on a sworn promise to never venture along an unknown road into an unknown campsite under the veil of night.
Adhering to these rules had steered me well through subsequent trips, and I had no intention of deviating now. I puttered on for a few hundred feet until I found a patch of dirt adjacent to the road that appeared large enough for a turnaround. I shifted into reverse and steered sharply, as if pulling into a tight parking spot. And that’s when it happened—a sudden jolt upward. The emergency tire, which was stored under the back of the van, had wedged onto a boulder, lifting the back of the vehicle completely off the ground by several inches. I heard the wheels spinning in vain, as helpless and useless as I suddenly felt. We jumped out, crouched under the van, and faced the predicament: The van was now a tripod, balanced on its two front wheels and the boulder in the back.
The only thing to do was dig.
Beneath one rear tire, we placed two 2×6 boards to bridge the gap to the ground, and on the other side we employed a jack to hoist the van enough to free it from the boulder. It was still tilted at an awkward angle, but at least we had a plan. Using my large shovel, we took turns digging and jabbing and slicing around the boulder. For two long hours, we dug into the night, our rhythm slowed by the clumsiness of shoveling in a confined space. And then, ever so slightly, the boulder moved. Our victory celebration dissolved rather quickly, however, as we now faced the task of getting the beach ball-sized boulder out from under the van.
With whatever strength we could still muster, we haphazardly dug a long trench and then worked at pulling and prodding the boulder down the trench and away from the van. An hour later, we were free.
Hoping our embarrassing hiccup would go unnoticed by future travelers, we backfilled the ditch, returned the boulder, and got on our way. Having learned our lesson about turning around on such a narrow road, but also still committed to following my rule of not entering an unknown campground after dark, we accepted our fate: The only way out was backward. With Sam and Paul walking along the road behind me and yelling out instructions, I carefully drove in reverse until we reached a crossing with another dirt road. By 10:30 p.m., after finding a more suitable place to camp, we were at last sitting in our chairs under a dark sky sanctuary, breathing easy.
Welcome to the Bodie Hills, I thought to myself, shaking my head in disbelief.
Rising directly north of Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra, the high-altitude landscape of the Bodie Hills serves as an important ecological transition zone, bridging the Sierra Nevada range in the west with the Great Basin Desert in the east. Taking precedence in the center of this area are Potato Peak and Bodie Mountain, which both soar above 10,000 feet. To the east are Beauty and Bald Peaks, hovering around 9,000 feet and straddling the California and Nevada border with delicate charm. Despite their considerable heights, all of these mountains appear as if their tops have been lopped off, leaving the summits smoothed over, an appearance that earned them the name “Hills.”
Sagebrush dominates the region, covering the slopes, meadows, and ridges. I can’t help but wonder if the ubiquitous plant contributed to this 139,740-acre patch of land being overlooked by other agencies before ultimately falling under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, one of four federal agencies that manages public lands in the United States. When compared to the iconic backdrops and forested abundance of Yosemite National Park, just a dozen miles to the west, the sea of sage here must have seemed inferior.
The other half of the Bodie Hills name is inseparably tied to an easterner named W. S. Bodey, who discovered gold in the region in 1859, sparking a series of short booms and long busts in the second half of the nineteenth century. At peak gold production, from 1878 to 1882, upwards of five thousand people lived in the town of Bodie (legend has it a sign painter misspelled Bodey and the name stuck), and today remnants of the ghost town, which include 114 buildings and an ore-crushing stamp mill, can be witnessed at Bodie Historic State Park, which encompasses 495 acres in the center of the Hills.
Photo by Josh JacksonIn the early years of the California gold rush, prospectors like W. S. Bodey went out in search of flakes and nuggets in streams, washes, and gulches. Mining was happening only on a small scale, meaning any individual with a pickaxe, shovel, and pan could mine for gold. As the influx of miners increased, these easily accessible “placer” deposits were quickly depleted, meaning miners were required to adopt more sophisticated methods of extraction. Soon, dynamite was being used to blast dangerous tunnels and shafts that led to gold veins running deep underground. Ore-crushing stamp mills were then employed to extract the gold from the surrounding rock.
In the late nineteenth century, Bodie miners adopted a common technique called cyanide heap-leaching. Instead of blasting more tunnels, they pulverized the already-removed bedrock and placed it on leach pads, which are large impermeable liners that prevent cyanide and other chemicals from seeping into the soil during the gold-extraction process. A cyanide solution applied to the ore would separate any microscopic gold particles from the rock, and then the leftover materials were dumped in a tailing pond, which unfortunately posed a long-lasting environmental threat, as toxins, including mercury, often leached into the surrounding soil and watersheds. The cyanide heap-leaching method is still favored in the developed world today, but the scale, methods, and impacts are of course much larger than what was being done in Bodie. Even after more than a century of inactivity in the ghost town, the scars of mining remain visible on the surrounding land. Satellite photos reveal huge mounds of waste rock and so many tunnel shafts that the landscape resembles Swiss cheese.
The mineral that sparked the great rush to California in 1848 and catapulted the region into statehood still runs through the veins of the Bodie Hills. Recently identified gold deposits sit along the western boundary of the Walker Lane, a notable geological fault line along the California–Nevada border that is opening countless pathways for new mineral formations.
Driving this resurgent hunt for gold are two main factors: the dramatic rise in gold prices, which have increased by more than 600 percent since the dawn of the twenty-first century, and the facilitative framework of the General Mining Act of 1872.
The Mining Act, a cornerstone of US mining legislation, opened for exploration and acquisition all valuable mineral deposits on public lands. The antiquated law still allows individuals and corporations to file claims on twenty-acre parcels, without limits on how many parcels can be taken. While the financial cost to stake a claim is notably low, with claim fees totaling just a few hundred dollars, the law’s most critically outdated aspects are the lack of leasing costs and the absence of royalty payments to the United States government for extracted minerals.
Another glaring omission from the initial act was its failure to include environmental protections and/or requirements for land rehabilitation, a choice that has led to widespread ecological damage. According to the California Department of Conservation, of the estimated forty-seven thousand abandoned mines in the state, 11 percent are still likely causing water and soil contamination. Although subsequent federal regulations have attempted to address these issues, they have largely been inadequate, often leaving taxpayers with the financial burden of remediation.
Thanks to the glaring shortcomings of the one-hundred-fifty-year-old Mining Act, both domestic and international corporations are eager to capitalize on the low-cost land grab. Through the efforts of the Bodie Hills Conservation Partnership, a broad coalition of groups actively fighting mining claims in the area, I learned about the many threats facing the Bodie Hills today. One of the corporations targeting the area is Paramount Gold, which, just in the month we were visiting, acquired claims on 2,260 acres just over the Nevada border. In a report from the Junior Mining Network, the president of Paramount, Glen Van Treek, spoke candidly about the prospects for their Bald Peak gold project: “All indications point to the potential for an open-pit deposit.”
While advocates argue that the gold mining industry contributes taxes, creates employment, and provides a crucial resource for modern technological devices, the reality isn’t so rosy: Their taxes are minimal, their jobs often fleeting, and only 7 percent of the world’s gold production is used for technological purposes. Although gold is used in consumer electronics, medical and aerospace devices, and other equipment and technologies, this usage is disproportionately small compared to the volume of gold extracted from the land. The majority of gold is allocated to jewelry (46 percent) and investments (47 percent), with governments and central banks stockpiling gold bullion, predominantly in underground vaults. This scenario underscores a profound irony: Almost half of what we extract from the ground goes right back into the ground.
For many gold mining corporations, their practices can be distilled into a simple formula, as evidenced by a century and a half of environmental destruction and abandoned mines across the West: Find the mineral, devastate the landscape, take the money, and then abandon the site once profits inevitably dwindle. This search-and-destroy approach prioritizes profits over the environment every time. The aftermath is a scarred landscape like the one surrounding Bodie, an area marked by fragmented habitats, corroded machinery, crumbling structures, no-trespass fencing, and pervasive toxicity from mercury and acid.
When viewed from the perspective of today, the harsh reality of boom-and-bust gold mining becomes clear: The brief boom benefited only a fortunate few. The bust was for everyone else.
The day after getting my van stuck, Sam, Paul, and I headed to the southeastern side of the area, closer to the site of Paramount’s new claims. After a previous solo trip was cut short by the unanticipated arrival of a May snowstorm, I had been eager to return for a fuller experience. I also wanted to better understand what an open-pit deposit might mean for this part of the Hills. What flora and fauna thrived there? How would the ecosystem be affected?
With some initial help from Friends of the Inyo, a local conservation organization familiar with the terrain, I mapped out a long hike that would have us traverse the ephemeral Dry Lakes Plateau, pass near Beauty and Bald Peaks, and eventually lead us to the intersection of Atastra and Rough Creeks. The territory we were entering was largely unknown to hikers, and outside of a few beaten-up back roads, there were no trails. Luckily, walking on the high plateau is more like what I call “off-roaming”—a quieter, slower, cleaner, and more arduous form of off-roading. The beauty of walking in sagebrush country is there are no dense forests or unscalable mountains to hold you back.
We started our walk mid-morning, after several rounds of coffee. Our path started by following a steep incline along a battered dirt road that would have wreaked havoc on almost any vehicle. Potholes were the size of wheelbarrows, and smooth undulations of mud resembled short snowdrifts, as if a winter of snow, wind, and ice had been followed by a summer of dry heat that had sculpted the road into a series of obstacles. Just as the terrain started to level out, we got our first glimpse of the Dry Lakes Plateau. The smaller of the lakes was a peeling, cracking, salty spectacle with tiny crimson plants spreading across the lakebed, resembling tentacles in a pale sea. We walked right to the middle of it, imagining what it would feel like in late spring to take a cold plunge in the exact same spot. The second lake was so vast it seemed to run straight off the horizon. Lingering smoke from the Tamarack Fire painted the sky a hazy pink.
Looming over the lakes was Beauty Peak, and I could see that it was aptly named. There was simply no other way to describe it. The gentle slope from the lake to the top of Beauty was ever so gradual, like the perfect sledding hill, and its double summit appeared rounded with the softest touch. The saddle between the summits was as inviting as any I had ever seen—an ideal spot for a tent or a lawn chair if you felt like hauling one up there.
Photo by Josh JacksonAs we admired Beauty Peak, Sam quietly gestured toward something in the distance that stopped us in our tracks. Sandwiched between us and the slow rise of Beauty was a herd of twenty-four pronghorn antelope. I had read they could sometimes be found here in late summer, but such occurrences were rare. Yet there they were, standing frozen among the sagebrush, staring straight at us. At least three males were in the group, their charcoal-colored horns strikingly juxtaposed against their white-and-tan fur coats. It was not lost on me that we were witnessing the second-fastest land animal on earth and the fastest over long distances. They can sustain speeds of thirty-five miles per hour for four straight miles. As we quietly crept toward them, they suddenly took off in a burst of collective energy, their long legs moving away from us in perfect unison. They darted this way and that, like a school of fish, until they disappeared over a short ridge and out of sight.
Though we were only a few miles into our walk, already the surprise of my surroundings was overwhelming. The surreal lakebeds. The pink skies. Beauty Peak. The pronghorn. We were left in one of those mindless trances that comes when nature completely engulfs you. No amount of planning or research can prepare you for an experience like that, and this one seemed to hit the three of us simultaneously as we forged our own paths across the long expanse of the second dry lake, contemplating the experience each in our own ways.
We reconvened along the old road, now transformed into a two-track path with vegetation sprouting from the center strip. A small herd of cows welcomed our arrival with indifference, barely looking up as they meandered through the maze of sagebrush. Our pace was relaxed, the late summer sun offering plenty of daylight for the kind of unhurried walks I had grown accustomed to. Under the outstretched canopy of a lonely juniper, we stopped to consult with my offline maps for the best route to the intersection of Atastra and Rough Creeks. From where we stood, the road took a decided turn downward, dropping six hundred feet into a small meadow, where it abruptly came to an end. The end of the road meant we would be on our own to the creek intersection.
While Paul and I deliberated, Sam had found a noteworthy chunk of obsidian nearby, and we passed the black igneous rock around in admiration. This volcanic glass, once widely utilized by Native people for tools and trade, served as a tangible connection to those who roamed these hills long before us, and before the cattle, the ranchers, and the forty-niners descended upon the landscape.
This is the traditional homeland of the Kootzaduka’a, the southernmost band of the Numu People, who have long called the Mono Basin home and once moved freely between the Bodie Hills, Mono Lake, and the Sierra Nevada.
The Kootzaduka’a people’s yearly cycle through their various homelands was closely tied to the availability of regional food sources at certain times of year. The severe winters and the unpredictable timing of snowmelt made summer the most active period for their relocations, when the men would venture into the high Sierra to pursue deer and bighorn sheep while the women engaged in the meticulous work of seed harvesting in the meadows and along creek banks. They focused on the seeds of nutrient-rich bunchgrasses, such as giant wildrye, Indian ricegrass, and desert needlegrass, essential components of their diet.
As the summer waned, the Kootzaduka’a would migrate to the northern shores of Mono Lake, where they held rabbit drives and harvested kutsavi, the larvae of brine flies. And growing on the southern slopes of the Bodie Hills were pinyon pine trees, which contained the pine nuts that would help sustain the community through harsh winters. In My First Summer in the Sierra, published in 1911 but based on his experiences in 1869, a young John Muir described a fall nut harvest he witnessed among the Kootzaduka’a: “Old and young, all are mounted on ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands . . . . Arriving at some well-known central point where grass and water are found . . . the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden trees, followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily, the burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here and there against rocks and sage-brushes, chased and gathered by the women and children with fine natural gladness.”
But the discovery of gold in Bodie changed everything for the original stewards. As the gold boom took over in the late 1870s, thousands of fortune seekers arrived, demanding resources to support their quest. Prospectors cut down trees to construct mining tunnels, and the influx of townsfolk took from the area what they needed for housing, food, and firewood. Simultaneously, the Homestead Act lured ranchers to the fertile areas around Mono Lake, and there they destroyed the Kootzaduka’a gathering meadows, converting them to sustain livestock and crops to meet the miners’ needs. This agricultural takeover and mineral-extraction bonanza led to extensive logging of pinyon pines, not just for construction purposes but also to satisfy the insatiable need for cordwood, which fueled the stamp mills and kept the bustling town of Bodie operational.
Photo by Josh JacksonAs the four-year gold rush (1878–1882) faded with the dwindling gold reserves, the temporary community that had risen around it began to collapse. Bodie’s volatile economy—all the shops, hotels, stage lines, mining and lumber companies, and individual prospectors and farmers—collapsed as the gold veins were exhausted. The town slowly fell into ruin, the mine shafts and tunnels were abandoned, and the surrounding hillsides, stripped of vegetation for mining and lumber, were left scarred and desolate.
The most disturbing tragedy, however, was the catastrophic impact on the Kootzaduka’a people, for whom the gold rush had spelled near extinction and the obliteration of their homeland and culture. Their important summer camps on the north shore of Mono Lake were now inhabited by homesteaders. The meadows and creeks where they collected bunchgrass seeds were now routes traveled by settlers, sheep, and cattle. And the pinyon pines, which nourished them through winter, were chopped down. With their homeland overrun, many Kootzaduka’a became laborers for the very people who displaced them and the very industries that destroyed their food sources.
The story of the Kootzaduka’a, much like those of numerous Native communities throughout the state and country, underscores the tragic legacy of gold mining. It reveals the troubling calculation in which fleeting profits are not just prioritized over landscapes but also deemed more precious than human lives.
After lunch beneath the juniper, Sam, Paul, and I followed the road down to the meadow. Beyond it, we encountered a dense tangle of trees and plants, with Atastra Creek quietly bubbling along behind. We picked our way downstream along a narrow cattle trail lined by encroaching sagebrush, wax currant, and rabbitbrush. To the east, crimson rock formations emerged from the earth, appearing out of place, as if they had been spewed from a distant volcano.
A half mile later, we arrived at the confluence where Atastra runs into Rough Creek. We couldn’t help but smile. After a winter without much precipitation and a summer of aridity, this meeting point of the waterways was an unassuming affair; where they finally greeted one another, amidst willow saplings and swaying grasses, each creek ran only a foot wide. We huddled around the confluence and howled with delight at reaching our destination and getting to soak in the clear, cool water. We found grass along the banks of Rough Creek, discarded our backpacks, shoes, and socks, and sat down in the refreshing stream.
While Sam and Paul lingered in the water, I laced up my shoes and followed Rough Creek downstream until I came upon a small grove of aspens that had taken up residence in the confined spaces between the crimson rock formations lining the creek. Aspen groves are common around the Hills, sometimes in plain sight and other times tucked away in hidden valleys, and I was glad to see them here. I first fell in love with the tree when I learned of its revolutionary root system, which binds an entire forest together underground as a single organism. Every aspen comes from this root system, and each tree is a genetic replica of every other aspen within the grove—a complex system of clones in various stages of their life cycle. Their unusual bark, equipped with a thin green photosynthetic layer, enables the trees to grow in winter and provides important nutrients for migrating mule deer that run through the Bodie Hills, and the groves also provide crucial ecosystems and habitats for wildlife who use them for shade and visual cover.
As I stood among the aspens, I imagined the vast and interconnected system of roots just below the surface, all connected to one another, passing nutrients and information in one of the oldest dialogues we have on earth. A light breeze set the leaves quaking and trembling in a lively chorus, nature’s very own tambourine, and the sound echoed off the canyon walls. I don’t often feel as if nature is speaking to me, but in that moment I couldn’t help but find a good place in the middle of the grove to sit down and listen.
In the late afternoon, we packed our things, dunked our hats in the creek for one last head bath, and retraced our steps. As we ascended the road and walked along the Dry Lakes Plateau, we noticed the wind had shifted and the smoky pink sky we had encountered that morning had given way to a brilliant blue. Beauty Peak emerged in stunning clarity. It was there, in Beauty’s shadow, that the Bald Peak mining project would take center stage.
North of Beauty and just across the Nevada line, Paramount Gold has laid plans for exploratory drilling at eleven sites, with proposals to clear two additional areas for equipment staging and helicopter access. While these activities alone are poised to introduce a significant level of machinery and noise, a more pressing concern casts its own shadow with all the foreboding of a looming tragedy: What happens if their exploratory efforts uncover enough gold to justify a cyanide heap-leach mine? Looking out at the proposed site, it’s almost beyond comprehension to imagine the quiet beauty of this landscape replaced with a giant open pit.
Helicopters would buzz overhead, delivering machinery and water for drilling. New access roads would be carved through the sagebrush. Razor wire fences would be constructed, blocking off hiking and hunting access and fragmenting wildlife corridors for the pronghorn and migrating mule deer. The dwindling population of bi-state sage grouse, which relies on these areas for mating season, would be further compromised. The remote quiet would be replaced by the constant roar of trucks rumbling between the open pit and the piles of waste rock. The smell of diesel and chemicals would infiltrate the clean air. And what about the potential for contamination in Rough Creek, which flows through canyons and aspens less than one mile away from the proposed site? The full repercussions of digging an open pit, accumulating piles of waste rock, and creating tailing ponds would irreversibly transform the environment.
The Bodie Hills were once deemed neither picturesque enough nor floristically diverse enough to hold value beyond the gold beneath them. But thanks to an expanding scientific understanding of ecosystems and biodiversity, the reality of the area is that it is an indispensable piece of a larger ecological puzzle—a refuge and corridor for dozens of fauna species, and a sanctuary for over seven hundred documented plants.
Time and again, it’s these “leftover” BLM landscapes that face the greatest risk of destruction. Rough Creek, meandering through sagebrush, may struggle to rival the universally acclaimed scenery of Yosemite, and that difference comes at a cost. By preserving only the most spectacular places, we too often neglect these supposedly valueless BLM lands. Imagine the uproar if a mining operation proposed to drill on Half Dome? The public outcry would resonate worldwide, propelled by the millions of people who have formed a deep place attachment with the National Park. Yet it remains difficult to permanently protect unknown and unseen landcapes like the Bodie Hills.
Our dogged pursuit of gold has, worldwide and over many centuries, wiped out landscapes by steadily eroding the biodiversity of the natural world. The pressing question remains: When will we say enough? The Bodie Hills serve as a clarion call, urging us to draw a line, to choose preservation over plunder. In facing such a crossroads, we might do well to heed the timeless counsel Theodore Roosevelt delivered in 1903 as he gazed upon the Grand Canyon: Leave it as it is.
Josh Jackson is a writer, photographer, and leading voice for public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Through his evocative Forgotten Lands Project, Josh employs immersive storytelling and striking visual narratives to inspire appreciation and engagement with our least understood, least protected, and largely unknown landscapes. His advocacy work has been featured by The Los Angeles Times, SFGate, and the Nature’s Archive podcast. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children. The Enduring Wild: A Journey into California’s Public Lands is his first book. Explore more of his work at forgottenlandsproject.com.
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