After having worked here for half a century or so, the man has been missed since he retired from The Salt Lake Tribune a few years ago. He covered all kinds of sports over that span, wrote thousands of stories, but dialed in especially on the great outdoors and on prep athletics.
In those last two realms, if anyone knows more than Tom Wharton about them, around all corners of Utah and everything in between, I have no clue who it would be.
He’s traveled all over the state, all over the West, all over the country, all over the world, writing, always writing, studying and chronicling what was in his path, people and places and things. He’s been on football fields and in high school gyms, notebook in hand, that most Utahns had no clue even existed. He’s camped here, there, everywhere. Slept under the stars. Walked under the buzzard-hot desert sun. He rafted for a week, bobbing up and down on the rapids raging through the Grand Canyon. That, he once told me, was one of his favorite adventures.
There have been many.
Like so many ghosts in the empty sagebrush-rimmed towns he’s warbled through, Wharton’s mostly gone now from The Tribune’s pages, but, like maybe a few of those ghosts, not gone gone. Even at present, he’ll jump in to write an account now and again. He’s authored books about the more memorable wild spaces he’s seen, some of them not as well known as they could be, most of them unique to the country and the region.
He’s an outdoor writer’s outdoor writer, painting pages with words like watercolor splashed across the sky, and probably one of the most famous of his kind, though you’d never guess it from his demeanor.
If I needed guidance as to where to go for a camping or fishing or hunting or hiking or mountain-climbing or bird-watching or four-wheeling or driving trip out yonder somewhere, in Utah, out in them thar’ hills someplace, or anywhere else, Tom would be the guy to ask. Old dude has moved around and darn near memorized those footsteps. If I wanted to know the best place to eat a steak sandwich in Torrey or the score of a football or basketball game played between Tabiona and Union high schools in, say, 1972, I’d go to the same guy.
But here’s the thing: Wharton’s work is not done.
He may have more influence, a louder voice now than he ever has heretofore — on social media. It’s not the number of followers that’s impressive — around 3,000 — it’s the reach of those who follow him and the content of his messages.
I follow him on Twitter. I do more than that. I learn from him on Twitter.
He makes his own comments, but, equally importantly, he replies to the comments of others, from elected officials to outraged fans, from the politically indoctrinated, people who should know better than to spout the lies they tell, to those seeking open, honest education.
And he does it with a firm presence, but not an obnoxious one.
A rarity in this time of swinging social-media hammers when a slight turn of the screw would do.
Wharton is wise and kind, but smart, too.
And funny. He hunts down puns and laughs at good jokes.
He’s a Dodgers fan, but fans of other teams can forgive him for that.
He uses his time now that most of the games in his world have been covered, most of the coaches and players interviewed, most of the fish caught, most of the roads traveled, most of the stories told, to be a refreshing voice in a forum that needs it, needs him.
You may not always agree with his stances politically, but you’d have to respect where he’s coming from. His comments are well researched, well thought out. He’s made a habit of confronting folks like Mike Lee and Burgess Owens and Chris Stewart and Mitt Romney and others on both sides of the aisle, countering some of the ridiculous statements that are so easily passed off as fact these days when what they really are are … piles and puddles of bull spit.
What we have here then is a semi-retired sports and outdoors writer who has extra time now to study the issues and make factual and interesting comment on them. He’s not paid to do so, but he does it out of a sense of caring and responsibility and fun.
Whether he’s standing up for public school teachers who too often are under attack nowadays by people who think they have something to gain by doing so or challenging absurd allegations made by politicos who are bending and distorting whatever little truth that seeps into one side of their brains, blasting utter falsehoods out of the other side or just passing along useful information for whoever might see it, Tom Wharton is a treasure.
He’d beat me over the head with a tire iron if he knew I was writing this.
But he doesn’t, so … there.
Follow him at @TribTomWharton, but only if you want to be helped along in a sometimes-chaotic world, urban or countrified, by wise commentary. Who knows, it might even inspire those of you who have been around the block, around the state, around the world a few times to hand out some sage commentary of your own. We all could use it.