Ed Barbanell

After slogging away on Wall Street for a decade after college, Ed chucked it all, loaded up his old jalopy, and moved to Park City in 1993. The ski-bum gig didn’t last very long; he soon started graduate school at the University of Utah, where he earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy, and where he also met his wife, Melissa, another transplant from New York. With their two teenage boys together live in a hundred-year-old house in the heart of Salt Lake City, from where they frequently set off on adventures both near and far. Ed is a recently retired Professor (Lecturer) of Philosophy at the University of Utah. He regularly taught classes on environmental ethics and environmental philosophy. His published work includes a book on the water in the American West. Over the last quarter century, he has sought out the solace, wonder, and adventure of the desert landscapes of the Southwest. With ever-more frequency, it is the area around Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to which he is drawn, and it’s future he hopes to help shape.