Nevada to Utah: Notes and Pictorial

[mnaz]

From Nevada to Utah (part one)

I wonder how these two places could possibly be next to each other. Utah is preposterous vertical red rock. Nevada is the graceful open range. Utah is populated by people following a strict authoritarian religious creed. Nevada is favored by prospectors and outlaws and fools-- all three in one, usually.

Awhile back, I took a drive through the heart of Nevada into Utah. I hadn't planned on it, but the road and the land pulled me in that direction. It had to do with how quickly the ocean of the Great Basin desert engulfed me when I emerged from the mighty Sierras of California. The ocean of light spread before me was too much to resist.

The power of Nevada's high desert is its simplicity; its lack of noise, in every sense.... just a steady basin and range rhythm. But it's a slow beat; much too slow to keep up. A single measure, or stanza, might take hours, or days, and who has time for that? Don't look for "nature's greatest hits" here. Nothing much jumps out except the massive scale of vacant prospects. Things come out in those spaces, things you hadn't noticed before, if only due to a lack of distraction.

Wonder Mine Road, Nevada

Sagebrush Kingdom, Nevada

The Great Basin is so named because it is hydrologically self-contained. It's watercourses do not drain into the ocean, but into the dead heart of the desert. It is not simply one "basin", but a series of valleys alternating with north-south mountain ranges formed by distortion of the earth's crust caused by the collision of continental plates. Ancient cataclysmic events formed this realm, but it now offers profound peace.

Near the Utah border, I crested Nevada's last monumental corrugation of solid rock, and the Snake Valley was an expanding sea of light, diffusing around embankments, slowly conquering my vision. When I made the valley floor, I slipped into Utah, past a sign warning of no services for the next ninety miles, speeding at a standstill, arrow-straight across radiant solitude. On the far side, the road twisted through a dip in the Confusion Range, and I pulled over to check the map.

In front of me, Notch Peak rose from the sear sage and grass in the shape of a giant submarine fin sculpted into an otherwise typical bare mountain range. Was this the first hint of Utah's erratic form? I noted the quiet beyond my ability to hear it.

A little further down the road was Crystal Peak, a solitary mountain of white volcanic tuff, standing as another unmistakable landmark. I was deep into the silent kingdom. West of the Wasatch Range, Utah is just Nevada with different road signs. You might enter with notions of outlandish red rock just past the next hazy mountain range, gradually releasing this idea to persistent, simple serenity.

Crystal Peak, Western Utah

Basin and Range, Western Utah

Notch Peak, Western Utah

[mnaz]

From Nevada to Utah (part two)

I wanted to stop and take in this space more fully. I actually backtracked for awhile, crossing back over Confusion Range on a graded dirt road into the southern reaches of Snake Valley.

Across the basin, Wheeler Peak rose high above the desert floor on the Nevada-Utah border to an elevation of over 13,000 feet. Atop this peak is Great Basin National Park. I wanted to see what was up there. It suddenly made perfect sense. Since it was getting late, I found a small clearing off the road and made camp. That's one thing nice about the Great Basin. Most of it is public land, "managed" by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Exploration and camping possibilities are virtually unlimited.

The next morning, I crossed the valley to a tiny outpost called Baker, Nevada for breakfast and supplies, and then I drove up the eastern flank of Wheeler Peak into Great Basin National Park, climbing to the end of the road, at about 9500' elevation. From there, I would have to continue on foot. It would take some perseverence.

Eventually, I reached a stand of bristlecone pine at about 11,000 feet in elevation. Some of these trees are said to be over four-thousand years old; that is, if they're still alive. They all appeared dead, or dying; in no mood to conceal their enduring strain; bare, compact, and writhing in long-suffering, as densely packed in every twist as the rock they clung to.... all in a place as harsh as it gets.... the last place on earth you might think to look for the oldest living things on earth.

Just beyond was a small glacier inside a steep cirque, carved into Wheeler Peak's quartzite summit, rumored to be gouged out by much more disastrous ancient glaciation. The ragged, dull canyons and moraines were the color of astronaut moon photos. Paint the sky black and I was standing on the moon.... my thoughts drifted that far. I imagined jumping ten feet off the ground, or leaving giant space boot prints for the ages.

Great Basin National Park-- Moonscape

When I came down off the mountain, I continued what I had started the day before. The anticipated Utah red rock kept itself hidden for over a hundred miles. Crossing the Wasatch Mountains, I saw hints of it in small outcroppings, but the theme hadn't changed much. Across the pass, I found yet more of the sagebrush sea interspersed with a hard-core farming valley here and there.

It was only at the exact point when all anticipation had finally vanished that I saw it-- that first brilliant red, striated, upthrust rock wall; a gateway to an enigma. Southern Utah hardly belongs on this planet. The towering and improbably grotesque rock formations really have no logical right to exist, and can only be explained by various convoluted leaps of faith. I often find it so over the top that I cannot dial it in; like a strange virtual simulation.... like something I might have ordered solely for my traveling amusement, that is, if I possessed the imagination.

"The Castle"-- Capitol Reef Nat. Park, Utah

I wandered south along the Waterpocket Fold, a hundred-mile long gash in the earth, splitting Utah's canyon country right down the middle. I followed tortured mountains to my west, with twisted slopes, topping out in strange coiling figures. I saw abrupt cliffs to my east which bared at least four distinct tiers of rock.... fluted, draped, scored.... orange, gray, green, and red. Strange orange pillars occasionally dotted the scene, like muzzled sentries. It was a good road, threading this landscape of nonsense; a spectacle which merited a team of tourists or scientists to document its aberration. But I was alone, and I welcomed the stillness, though it felt a little out of place.

The "Sentries"-- near Waterpocket Fold, Utah

I veered west, onto the Burr Trail and into Capitol Reef National Park and the heart of this silent theater; its various players cast out of prehistoric fire; a site of reckoning. I scaled a fantastic switchback path up through the Waterpocket Fold, rising through upended rock strata and folds that were tilted as steeply as the road. This had to be an ancient ground zero, but what happened?

Waterpocket Fold, Capitol Reef Nat. Park, Utah

I am never too far from thoughts of unknown catastrophic violence when I confront Utah's towering cliffs. I always find peace in these spaces, but it's an odd sort of peace, lending credence to the idea that beauty should "scare you" on some level, perhaps like art which exposes what is unsettled inside of you, seen in just the right light.

It might be worth the drive.....

Bristlecone pine, Great Basin National Park

[mtmynd]

mnaz, my friend - what a wonderfully written travelogue! Your interspersing with those amazing pictures of places that others have never seen are a wonderful addition to your writing.

Well done and most interesting. Thank you for sharing this.

cecil

[Lightning Rod]

mnaz

I agree with Cec. This is so fine. Great pics and great text.
You are so on time with this kind of article. This is just what Studio8 is about.
Thank you for your care.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Notes of an earnest, awake and attentive traveler, mnaz.

The photos are well-composed and the text and images together produce a riveting simulacrum of rock and desert.

I lived in Nevada for a while, and its ghostly landscape configurations are nicely captured here.

I even spent the night on the beach at Pyramid Lake, outside Reno-- home of the white pelicans and magnificent rock chimneys.


--Z

[mnaz]

thanks all for your replies...

Zlatko, LR, and Cecil...

My first experience of Nevada was Las Vegas. I escaped the
clammy, dark Northwest several years back to go drink and make
some cash contributions to the casinos. The first thing that grabbed me was the 75-degree sunshine in March, but when I drove to the Grand Canyon, the desert itself took hold of me, and I felt a strong connection.

It further hit home when I explored northern Nevada. I drove to the Black Rock Desert, north of Pyramid Lake; an enormous, flat ancient dry lake bed, or "playa". I knew little of it except that a rocket car once set a land speed record there, and that the madness of "Burning Man" occurs there every September, when they truck in portable toilets and the hipsters show up to alter trajectory and become the desert's art. I went there mainly because it was the biggest blank spot on the map, and I figured that might be a good place to start. When I first sat out on the Black Rock playa, it blew me away.... one of those spiritual passages that we all have at one time or another (even if many would deny it).

The rest is history. I've been all over Nevada and southeastern Oregon, as well as parts of the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan deserts of Califonia, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. It's all a big part of me, now. A land with an endless supply of horizons. As it turns out, I'm actually preparing for a move to New Mexico,
hopefully within the month.

Thanks again for looking in.

[sooZen]

mnaz,

I would have spaced past this space but Cecil (thank you Cecil) directed my scattered energies here to your story and pictures. I am so grateful he did. I too, as you know, am in love with desert places, a desert 'rat' who has been there in wild and lovely desert expanse in all kinds of weather, now, mostly drought. I have arisen early to go into the surrounding Chihuahuan plateau after a rare rain and seen the life literally spring from the ground.

Eventually, I reached a stand of bristlecone pine at about 11,000 feet in elevation. Some of these trees are said to be over four-thousand years old; that is, if they're still alive. They all appeared dead, or dying; in no mood to conceal their enduring strain; bare, compact, and writhing in long-suffering, as densely packed in every twist as the rock they clung to.... all in a place as harsh as it gets.... the last place on earth you might think to look for the oldest living things on earth.

I envy you when I read about the Bristlecones, the oldest and ancient 'Standing People' of Native American lore and spirit for I have never touched them, put my hands in theirs and I would so love to do that. (I still hope to someday.)


We are looking forward to you moving closer for we may take advantage of you, kindly of course, and do a show where you may land and you can buy us a beer or two.

SooZen