Check Out Stephen Trimble’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Trimble.

Hi Stephen, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was in my twenties, I began photographing and writing about people and landscapes across the West while working as a seasonal park ranger. When I famously took a wrong turn leading my first nature walk through the Fiery Furnace at Arches, the senior ranger at the end of the line had to rush up and get us back on track. The next season, camping on my days off at Capitol Reef, I searched for picnic tables to sleep on because I was afraid of scorpions. This was a long time ago. I quickly learned not to worry about bugs and started glorying in fluted sandstone walls and gnarled juniper and raucous Pinyon Jays. The slickrock canyons of the Colorado Plateau have been my spiritual home ever since.

I’ve had amazing, unforgettable experiences while working on 25 books as a writer, editor, or photographer. I floated the Colorado River in Grand Canyon with musicians from the Paul Winter Consort, listening as they recorded in side canyons. I walked pristine tundra and forest at Snowbasin with the Swiss course designer as he imagined the jumps and turns that would become the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic downhill racecourse. A San Carlos Apache medicine man invited me to photograph during the three days of a young Apache woman’s coming-of-age ritual, the most powerful community ceremony I’ve ever witnessed. I’ve listened to Pueblo potters tell me stories about how they dream of their designs. And I’ve seen the Northern Lights from the Black Rock Desert long before Burning Man discovered the place.

My books became more personal over time. I started out writing straight natural history, then added people—Native people, first. When I had kids, I wrote about how we make our connections with nature when we are young. My more recent books focus on conservation and advocacy. And finally, I’ve come around to writing about myself, which leads me to your next question…

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My buddies in my writing groups and my family members have pushed me for years, saying, “You’ve got this story of your brother. That’s the biggest emotional story you have to tell. You’ve got to do something with it.”

I wasn’t ready. It was too incendiary, too emotional.

So I lived with this unfinished business, both as a person and as a writer.

I waited until everyone had died. My brother, my mother, and my father, all gone. Finally, a year after my father died, I was ready to open “the Mike file,” the envelope that preserved the few documents, clippings, and letters that constituted the record of my brother’s life. I knew that I needed to grapple with Mike’s story. And that decision quickly led to writing, and the writing led to a book.

When I was little, Mike was my big brother, who I adored—just as every little boy adores his big brother, right? But as he headed into adolescence, he turned into a volcano of anger, more and more unpredictable. Diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic, capable of violence,” Mike was committed to the Colorado State Hospital. He never spent a night at home again.

I was six when Mike left, and so I have few memories of him in our home. I never had an ongoing relationship with my brother. His difficult life and death at 33 parallel the tragedy of our continuing failures in effective mental health treatment.

In writing this memoir about Mike, in trying to recreate his life, I learned that he had an enormously powerful influence on me and my life, as well. For the first time, I now realize that I defined myself as “not Mike.”

When the book was finally published last year as “The Mike File,” I felt I had not only created a worthy memorial to my long-lost brother, but I’d reached a level of understanding of myself that I didn’t even know I was looking for.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I think of myself as a messenger, going out into the world and listening—to the folks I interview, to the landscapes I pay attention to—bringing back stories in words and photographs for everyone who hasn’t been there.

I’m most proud of my book about Southwestern Native nations, “The People: Indians of the American Southwest.” I visited all 50 Southwestern tribes and interviewed dozens of people. Their voices fill the book. My favorite book? “Talking with the Clay: the Art of Pueblo Pottery in the 21st Century.” Having the chance to interview Pueblo potters from Taos to Hopi was a privilege and an honor.

I also feel pretty darn good about my two books to defend Utah public lands with the power of writing. Terry Tempest Williams and I co-compiled “Testimony: Writers of the West Speak on behalf of Utah Wilderness,” a book of essays we distributed in Washington D.C. that helped convince President Bill Clinton to declare the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. How do we know? He told us! I followed that book two decades later with another collection of “art as advocacy” as editor of “Red Rock Stories: Three Generations of Writers Speak on Behalf of Utah Public Lands.” This book became part of the conversation leading to President Barack Obama’s declaration of Bears Ears National Monument.

What matters most to you?
The well-being of my family. The survival of democracy in America—real democracy, which means majority rule by a functional government that takes care of all of us equally. Empathy, kindness, laughter. A robust war-effort response to the cataclysm of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Time in wild places. The thrill of seeing (and reading) great art. Delicious food and drink, shared with friends. The satisfaction of crafting good stories in words and photographs.

I think the “why” is built into these answers, which pretty much describe how I define a good life. The poet Mary Oliver says it best. “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stephentrimble.net
• Instagram: @ stephentrimblephoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephen.trimble.37/

Image Credits
Stephen Trimble portrait by Simon Blundell
All other photos © Stephen Trimble