Great Salt Lake

May 17, 2004

The edges of the great salt lake scrawl, wind and stretch as if formed by something other than nature. Even from the air this massive thing appears shallow. It’s edges stretch in wide, undefined layers laid down in the same way that, after soaking up hours of sweat, a white line appears later in the translucent white band on the outside of a blue ball cap. Thirty games later there are several lines tracing the perimeter of the original line. The ball cap becomes a dirty brown thing of beauty. Blue becomes gray becomes umber. Salt has a way of describing the swirl of elements past. It is a dry and tired voice. The whole scene speaks of energy spent rather than potential energy. People gravitate here not to be on the cutting edge but to connect to a stolid and ancient universe. Where else would aliens bring the sacred Mormon tablets? Where else would immortal commandments of morality be issued. The Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea live these parallel lives. Stranded by the oceans that once sat atop their plains are the million acre fossils of a green and smiling sea. This is the middle east on the flanks of the mid-west. A testing ground for aggression and praetorian doctrine. The chopper squadron’s of Boise might travel all the way here to simulate the retrieval of refugees along the northern shore. The trace elements of bomb blasts have laid quietly in wispy saline ridges and now softly crunch under the soles of sand coloured boots. From “the four corners” and out into the deserts fan the random craters of marginal military experiments -- opportunistic drilling and digging. Futility. To Utah and her sisters Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada these are routine yet laughable violations. Attacking the tiger with a toothbrush.They will effortlessly endure and outlive these dumbass fire ants. We will be burnt, drenched, evaporated, dried up, distilled and washed away again in one breath of their lifetimes. Ancient conflicts in the deserts are perpetuated by something in this salt and sand. The salt and sand needs company. By what’s happening in modern history I can see we are accelerating to our destinies. There are many who are born in countries without deserts. The plumping water in their bodies is not pulled by the same moon. They may be closer to the pull of magnetic north than to the boney finger that beckons a shaman out under circling buzzards. Moisture will, however, move toward the vacuum and those juicy morsels clinging to the edges of the wet world will one day end up as quiet sand and salt and dust on the edges of a great salt lake.