Before, to paraphrase Wallace Stegner, the freeway split and ruined this valley, there was the highway. The old highway, the highway that you took from Salt Lake to Cedar City and St. George (and Mesquite and Vegas). Highway 91. Some segments of it still exist, and I used it today. I stopped just outside Summit and wandered around in the sagebrush for an hour while the breeze blew. On the way back to the Chev I noticed this little old homestead, dug into a bank beneath a couple of juniper trees (cedar trees to the locals). It has just about all you could want—though it is currently missing a roof. It is hard to imagine giving it up for a plastic box in town.
I’ve stood in the very living room of this humble abode, or was I in the bedroom? It’s hard to tell when you can spit from one end of the house to the other.
ReplyDeleteSometimes when I hike through the sage I carry my .22; mostly just because. Every now and then there might be an old tin can to poke a hole in. I don’t kill fauna, but many dead limbs have been shot off an old wretched bush. On the day I visited this cabin, I had shot my requisite two shots for the day. Usually enough. I stood in the entry, imagining life from years ago. The view was peripherally limited, but abundant coming straight at you. In my mind men were approaching. They were government agents, coming to say they were building a road; it would bring prosperity and opportunity - unless you were living in a small homestead. Then it would only bring the winds of change that eventually blow the roof off a place. I kicked around the dirt a little and left. Its good to see the place is still standing.
Reader Three! Your comment reminds me of something Bernard DeVoto once wrote to Wallace Stegner when both of them were living on the east coast. Stegner, evidently, had a little farm, and DeVoto wanted to visit: "Is there anywhere on your place where a man can walk—walk a long way, off the roads, in the woods? Is there any place where a man can shoot a .22?"
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