IN THE BOTTOM HALF OF UTAH, RISING FROM A JIGSAW OF CAYENNE-HUED SANDSTONE BLUFFS, LIES A LAND THAT IS AS CONTENTIOUS AS IT IS AN INDELIBLE PART OF THE AMERICAN IDENTITY. Few landscapes evoke the promise, self-reliance, and hardship of the American frontier as immediately as this region’s red rock buttes and canyons. Some of these places—Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce, Zion—are already mythic, immortalized by the likes of John Wesley Powell, Wallace Stegner, and, most famously, Edward Abbey. Then there’s Bears Ears National Monument, a Delaware-size swath of wilderness that has become an infamous flashpoint over resource management, conservation, and the fate of public lands. It’s the sort of country you can pedal through all day for days on end, as I did this past October, where you hardly see other…
