In 1975, Jim Stiles, a follower of Edward Abbey, arrived in Utah and became a park ranger, environmental activist and writer. Three decades later, he is trying to carry on Abbey’s legacy with his rabble-rousing, trouble-making newspaper The Canyon Country Zephyr. With humor, Stiles asks serious questions about civilization and sustainability. “The newcomers are intimidated by the solitude, and so they try and make it just like the place they left.” The Zephyr’s slogan is “Clinging Hopelessly to the Past,” and Stiles does just that—writing copy, drawing illustrations and caricatures, and pasting up pages with a hand-waxer and Exacto blade. Filmmakers Doug Hawes-Davis and Drury Gunn Carr include rare clips of Abbey and environmental protests to round out this entertaining, yet provocative, portrait of one of the Southwest’s more conscientious—and cantankerous—characters.
—Mary Duffy