Thoughts on Travel, Part IV
Posted by: Archimedes on Oct 10, 2008 - 02:44 PM
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And so it is my wife and I find ourselves on our return trip home now, leaving Salt Lake City behind us. I hadn't spent time as I might have liked to describing the city, but instead spent it exploring the city with my wife, frequently losing my sense of direction as we meandered block after block throughout the downtown area.
Salt Lake City is a strange compilation of cultures and scenery. A place where old and new collide, where seven and eight story tall brick structures built with great craftsmanship and skill sit adjacent to towering glass and steel skyscrapers that mark the age of epic construction by man, a time when we turned from art and eclectics in design to sleekness and precision. It's a dichotomy in and of itself, a city that saw such rapid growth that it hadn't time to clear one stage of its life away to make way for the new stage of it's life, so it instead incorporated both. It's a city that withing a few minutes walk, one can travel from run down industrial area of the city, through its lower middle class housing area and directly into its quickly beating heart, a thiving, bustling business center outstrips the downtowns of even the most modern cities, all in the shadow of the towering giants that dominate the downtown skyline.
And as we pull away in the still dark of the early morning, it's an amazing sight to look out over the vastness of the Salt Lake Valley area over which one can see nearly to Provo. A great, sparkling sea of lights with a crescendo at its center illuminating the skyline like a giant bank of candles at a Catholic church.
Still, it's a city, like any other. It does its best to hide its worst from public view while the train rolls by and reveals to its passengers the hidden underbelly of our giant metropolitan centers that is the same in all cities. While such sights are sad, they are no detraction from the city, as they are part of her design, part of her character, perhaps even part of her charm. The desperately poor live almost exactly beside those that are extraordinarily rich. While there is a marked point indicating the change of the social climate from one to the next it's so quick that the transition is almost nonexistant.
But this is Salt Lake. This is how it's moved and grown. Ugly and beautiful all at the same time, she never ceases to inspire awe in those that come to visit for such beauty as surrounds her and that which she contains within her own soul.
And so we roll away, a little sad perhaps because our trip is largely over, but in some ways glad to be making our way home and happy in the knowledge that we will return one day.
On past Provo, on into the mountains that we'd previously passed through at night, I now get to see their magnificence in the pale light of dawn. On through the mountains as the trees become increasingly scarce, we plod ever upwards as our ears pop and the mountains bask in their glory all around us. And on into Helper that I can now see by the light of day, on the edge of a vast desert, surrounded on all sides by mountains, a tiny trail cut through on either side allowing access by rail, if only just.
It's a unique perspective to take as we roll out of Helper and into the Bookcliff Mountains and the land around us grows more desolate, or at least as that is what some would call it. The trees, once at least present,if gnarled and twisted by time, climate and altitude, have all but disappeared now replaced by low lying scrub and sage. The earth is pale yellow, dry as a bone and such vegetation as can be seen isn't typically so much green as it is brown and appears brittle. The mesas and buttes tower up a few hundred feet, perhaps not appearing so tall or magnificent as the rest of the rockies, but majestic and silent they stand out like old men looking down on those passing by while a solitary eagle flies parallel to the train wheeling between their peaks.
This is the place that every little boy imagines when they play cowboys and indians. It's great lengths of desert surrounded and perforated with jagged ridges of sand, dirt and rock jutting up into the sky. This is where Doc Holiday is buried. This is where various Native American tribes made their home for so many generations. To simply call it a desert, although that is what it is, would serve it no justice. The term desert would imply to someone reading it the term “deserted”. From that one might assume “desolate” or “abandoned”. Perhaps even “forgotten”. And perhaps all of these terms may be true, that these lands and those remote and stalwart few that live here have been left behind, forgotten. But I personally don't think so. In fact, that might actually be one of the furthest things from the truth. Perhaps they've been forgotten by our country – forgotten that this land exists. But such forgetfulness isn't a detriment to the few that call this place home or to the place itself. The detriment is ours for failing to see this place, to comprehend its beauty and its value. Most assuredly, this is not a “God forsaken” place. God hasn't forsaken this country. This is God's country. As mentioned previously, this is a land pristine, possibly hostile, but most certainly awe inspiring in nature. For all of those that continue to tout that one can only know their God through a book or human dogma, they obviously have never been here where God's hand is so distinctly visible. I've traveled this country on several occasions and by several methods. I have lived in this world for forty years now. And with each time I am graced with the chance to see something like this, it so reinforces in my mind and in my soul that while each person claims to understand their God in their way and that only their ways is correct, that there is no correct way to know and understand your God or even understand that all of our Gods may not be the same God, or at least as we perceive them. No, God has not forsaken these lands; God has blessed them, perhaps not with abundance, but with beauty and a sense off freedom incomprehensible on the scale it's presented by mere humans. All we can do is appreciate it in the fashion we can from our limited understanding.
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