Desert Solitaire
Originally Published May 8, 2022
There’s no place we’ve been that Edward Abbey hasn’t been before. Desert Solitaire chronicles his time spent as a ranger in Arches National Monument along with warnings about “industrial tourism.” It is the introduction of “machines” into the wilderness that concerns him; the campers, trucks, motorboats, motorbikes, jet skis, etc., along with the infrastructure required to support them. He has a reasonable alternative. Rather than spending millions on development, have the National Park Service provide, free of charge, shuttle buses, horses, mules and guides, and allow people to explore wilderness in its natural state. This is the sort of proposal subject to accusations of “socialism,” and was, as we now know, easily ignored.
A second force about which he was prescient was the flooding of Glen Canyon to harness the Colorado for electrical power and water rights, all under the guise of giving the public access to water based recreation in the form of Lake Powell, now revealed as a Sisyphean effort, as the Glen Canyon reaches its “dead pool” level, and the marinas have been moved far from their “lakeside” motels.
Mule Days
A bright spot in all of this was the Bryce Canyon Mules Days Rodeo. Mules, the height of equinedom, or equinimity if you prefer, were on display doing all the things that horses generally do, but with maximum chill and insouciance. A cross between a horse and and donkey, they bring out the best in each while leaving the less attractive and frustrating traits far behind. It is a genetic accident of the highest order, which once discovered, has been cultivated by mule lovers from George Washington to the U.S. Army.
Mormonism
One of the things about traveling in Utah is both the invisibility and pervasiveness of the Mormons. The overwhelming presence of the tourists obscures the fact that the Mormons own and inhabit practically everything outside the parks. Their community, from the more isolated and often polygamist families, to the mainstream Mitt Romney types, determines much of the culture and politics of Utah.
To give a sense of the determination, dedication and perseverance of the Mormons, there is the story of the Hole in the Rock.
In 1880, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints commissioned a group of Mormons to establish a new settlement in the southeast corner of the state. Two hundred Mormons, men women and children, with livestock and twenty-six wagons, set out, and after traveling seventy miles, came to an impassable drop off two thousand feet above the Colorado River. Rather than turning back, they blasted and hammered a notch, the “hole in the rock,” and continued to construct a series of switchbacks down to the river. Wagons had to be lowered with ropes. When they finally reached the river and forded to the other side, they faced circumstances nearly as difficult. The trip took four months and the trail that they had carved was never used again.
