This article has been updated to correct the name of the “My Canyonlands” filmmaker and to reflect that she will not be participating in the q and a after the Moab Museum’s Nov. 3 Tuesdays With the Museum event.
Kent Frost was “a backcountry guide extraordinaire whose passion for the red rock canyons of southeast Utah helped create and popularize Canyonlands National Park,” according to the Moab Museum.
To learn about this historic Moab figure, you can join the Moab Museum at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 for the latest event in its Tuesdays With the Museum series, a screening of the 2009 film “My Canyonlands: The Adventurous Life of Kent Frost” followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and Kent Frost’s nephew, Jeff Frost, about Kent’s life and legacy – Kent Frost died in 2013. The event will be held on Zoom and Facebook Live, and will be available on the museum’s website.
“My Canyonlands” was made by the independent film company Sageland Media which was founded by local filmmaker Chris Simon. On its website, it describes “My Canyonlands” as “an enthralling portrait of an American original and his fierce love of the land” and Frost himself as “the last of the old time river-runners and a legendary backcountry guide whose love for the canyons of southeastern Utah helped create Canyonlands National Park.”
“Running through the film, as it runs through Kent’s heart, is the drowning of legendary Glen Canyon by Lake Powell – a still controversial environmental loss,” says Sageland Media. “Stunning photography of the landscape, stories, music, archival footage and present-day adventures weave together to create an intimate and compelling portrait of Kent Frost and the canyons he loves.”
The National Park Service has a bio of Frost on its website, along with an excerpt from “From Controversy to Compromise to Cooperation:The Administrative History of Canyonlands National Park.”
“Kent Frost’s role in mainstream society’s discovery of Canyonlands and the development of a constituency in favor of its preservation cannot be underestimated,” reads the excerpt. “From 1956, when he began commercial jeep tours, until Canyonlands National Park was created in September 1964, Frost took 138 trips and 593 people into the Canyonlands basin…Kent and his wife Fern helped reveal Canyonlands to the world.”
The film’s title harkens to an autobiographical book by Frost himself, published in 1971, titled “My Canyonlands: I had the freedom of it.” The book relates memories of his younger years exploring the canyonlands of southeastern Utah long before the area became a popular tourist destination.
Simon said she is excited that the film is being shown in Moab again and called Frost “one of Moab’s local treasures.”
Simon said she met Frost at an event held by Moab environmental nonprofit Living Rivers, headed by John Weisheit. John and his wife Suzette knew Frost very well – in fact, Suzette was to help him write his memoirs.
“She hooked me into doing the film instead,” Simon said.
She added, “[He was] such an interesting man, and he saw things we will never see… He liked to walk rather than ride and knew the country intimately, and was happy to share it with so many people.”
For more information, go to moabmuseum.org, go to the Moab Museum Facebook page or call the museum at 435-259-7985.
Moab Museum screens ‘My Canyonlands’
When: Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 6:30 p.m.
Where: www.moabmuseum.org; Moab Museum Facebook page
Cost: Free
More info: 435-259-7985
