Ear to the ground:

“I think they should have ‘Wind Days,’ where no one has to leave their house.”
–Local reflecting on the miserable beginning of Durango’s windy season

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It’s onward and upward for local idea man Jack Turner.

Turner, of Snow Monsters and Durango Connect but not LPEA Board fame, was inducted into the famed New York-based Explorers Club earlier this month. A fifth-generation Durangoan, he recently gave a talk at the club on his latest project, the Rainbow Bridge/ Monument Valley Expedition ONWARD!

The project picks up where Turner’s grandfather, Ansel F. Hall, left off some 80 years ago. The first chief naturalist of the National Park Service and a member of the Explorers Club from 1931-62, Hall was instrumental in organizing the Rainbow Bridge/Monument Valley Expedition of the expansive 3,000-square mile area on the Utah/Arizona border.

Turner’s project, RBMVE-Onward, includes ongoing field work in Arizona and Utah, 3-D terrain modeling and virtual-reality tools to recreate the experience and surroundings of that first expedition. The end result will be a museum exhibition where a visitor can “walk through time” in the American Southwest. The perspective includes multiple points of view involved it the first expedition: student archaeologist, aerial photographer, Native American guide and indigenous communities surrounding the area.

“I feel like a passenger in a time machine,” says Turner. “It’s hard to believe my grandfather’s work would be the springboard for a cutting-edge, modern-day, digitally based exploration. It’s been more than 80 years since the original Rainbow Bridge/Monument Valley Expedition, and we are carrying on their work today.”

The expedition made a significant contribution to science and history and had an enduring impact up the lives of its participants, said Will Roseman, executive director of the Explorers Club. He said Turner’s following of his grandfather’s footsteps serves as a reminder that “the thrill of exploration and the quest for knowledge transcends time and place, and is a trait deeply embedded in his family’s soul.”

Founded in New York City in 1904, the nonprofit Explorers Club promotes the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space by supporting research and education in the physical, natural and biological sciences. The club’s members have been responsible for an illustrious series of famous firsts: first to the North Pole; first to the South Pole; first to summit of Everest; first to the deepest point in the ocean; and first to the surface of the moon.

 “As the Onward project evolves, I think there will be other opportunities to collaborate with the Explorers Club,” said Turner. “The advances in digital technology to promote and explain exploration are certainly in keeping with the Club’s tradition of pushing new frontiers.”

Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition—ONWARD is a nonprofit organization directed by archeologist Elizabeth Kahn, who also serves as Manager of Art Publications at the Getty Museum and Guest Curator at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.