Friends –

Some things seem so arduously hard to achieve that it makes one feel despair at the impossibility. Such things would require miracles, giant explosions, divine intervention…. or at the very least, it could only happen through the influence of things that are rare and unanticipated. It could only be made better once in a blue moon, they might say.

I have known this despair now, as have many others. We suffered the loss of so many important accomplishments these past four years, and it seemed to start in 2017 with the brutal blow of eliminating most of Bears Ears National Monument. It felt to me to be a strike against native peoples even more so than the well-recognized, definitive blow to environmental conservation.

And how to get it back? So often it has seemed impossible.

And yet, based on real actions by so many people working so hard, I began to believe that this horrible decision could be overturned. Slowly, things started moving in the right direction, and the semi-mystic in me watched with joy as the Halloween Blue Moon agreed.

This painting, 'Blue Bluff' represents the Halloween blue moon rising over Locomotive Rock at the edge of Bears Ears National Monument.

  margie lopez read