Writer aims to widen conversation about Utah's open spaces

Originally from Denver, Steve Trimble has lived for many years in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Wayne County.

When he was a child his father took the family all over the western United States as part of his employment with the U.S. Geological Survey.

"By the time I was 30, I had a good feel for most of the West," said Trimble during an interview in his Avenues home. "I knew early that I wanted to work as a writer/photographer on landscape, then I started adding layers."

For several years after completing a degree from Colorado College, he was a park ranger in Arches, Capitol Reef and other Western national parks. "In those days, the National Park Service hired its resident rangers to write general interpretive booklets. I did some of that, and it led to writing natural history. Then I got a master's degree in ecology from the University of Arizona."

Then Trimble moved to Santa Fe "in the middle of Indian country and got a whole new layer of understanding," writing magazine pieces and books that emanated from his study of Indians. He married, had kids and started looking at the world through his kids' eyes. He did a collaborative work with his old friend Gary Nabhan, "The Geography of Childhood."

"I'm always ready to learn new things," Trimble said.

More recently, he collaborated with Utah naturalist Terry Tempest Williams on a book, "Testimony," written to oppose a bill in Congress that Trimble and Williams considered detrimental to wilderness.

"We assembled 20 writers with Western experience and published a chap book that we got into the hands of every member of Congress. That experience politicized my writing," Trimble said.

Trimble and Williams were also instrumental in attaining national park status for southern Utah's Grand Staircase. "President Clinton told Terry that the book made a big difference. Sens. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., and Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., actually read essays from the book into the Congressional Record. Feingold read mine and I was thrilled."

Once Trimble had a taste of the power of words, he decided he wanted to do "the highest thing I could do as a writer and compose a novel. So, I spent three years building this novel set in southern Utah during the uranium boom — and I just couldn't make it work. I was spinning to a halt when I got an assignment to photograph the old Snowbasin in 1997. I was working with a writer to do a travel story on the Snowbasin, a jewel that only locals knew about."