Ren is a senior at the University of Utah, studying child psychology and environmental science. She dedicates most of her time to school and the U’s female/non-binary outdoors club, Backcountry Squatters. Ren is an outdoor enthusiast and, per the description, loves boating, skiing, climbing, backpacking or anything else outside. Additionally, she loves to write creatively through poems, short stories and journalism via The Wasatch mag. Ren is preparing to graduate next spring and getting excited about the future ahead and assessing how to bring her hobbies into her life and career.
Steep narrow canyons draw in elite skiers the way that porch lights beacon moths. The danger and adrenaline rush combine to create a magnetic attraction. The possibility that such geology could be conquered...
Roughly 20,000 years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere was shifting dramatically as an ice age which had begun 100,000 years ago was beginning to thaw. Geologists and Archaeologists alike believe that the...
Upon A Red Morning
Canyons wake up slowly, so we do too: fifteen tousled heads and thirty dirty feet pressed in a row. Warm inside our wax paper envelopes like tootsie rolls, too cold to poke heads...
I come alive in the summertime
As the heat blisters my weathered hands
And a pink tan sets on my cheeks
The light from late nightfall and early sunrise awakens a lightness in me
I...
In the panhandle of Idaho where the world feels a little holier, I was a brand-new river guide. On my first commercial trip I ran the Main Salmon, a section of “wild and scenic” river protected under...
Desert Song
And the coyotes howled
Speaking to the heavens like an old friend calling to a lonesome night
A language only understood by the burnt cliffs
A tongue adopted through the erosion...
Life is inherently risky, from rolling out of bed in the morning, to dawning shoes and a shirt, we cycle through (unlikely), but possible risks in our everyday existence. Death is a possibility that we...
In college we live day to day, week to week, moving through the world with minds full of algorithms, due dates, and weekend plans. By the time a break rolls around, we have no plans. What to do, what to...
There is a place in the panhandle of Idaho where the world feels a little holier, where the water flows blue and cold and reckless, where sunsets creep over cliff-sides towering above the river bank. This...
The natural world holds within it the wonders of healing. Each blade of grass, riverside cattail, or desert brush possess medicinal properties that our ancestors, or early humans, once relied entirely...
Wild stallion bucks his head
challenging muzzles
Romping in the west desert of Utah
They live free amongst the sagebrush clinging to the hillside
A relentless wind rustles their mane
Magnifying glory
Their...
Hot springs are like treasures; their sources are buried deep in the Earth with steam rising from the water like mother earth’s hot tub. But where the heck are these things? Utah is teeming with these...
A child’s perception of the world is magical. It’s filled with wonder and a euphoric understanding of the simple pleasures found in bugs, grass, the shapes of clouds, and even the nostalgic smell...
