The Unbearable Whiteness of Utah

Red asked me for a photo of the view from my room. I sent her this image from Wikipedia of the Tabernacle (foreground) and the Temple (background). I'm pretty certain this was taken from the hallway window right next to my door in the Plaza.

True to my routine, I spent the first day in Salt Lake City---a weekday---absorbed in work at a downtown Starbucks. It was a snow-globe kind of a day, with big thick flakes coming down, filing up the streets with powder. I did a very un-Mormon thing by drinking two large cups of coffee while working.

On the way out the door of Starbucks, a shivering homeless man asked me if I could spare a dollar. Like everyone I'm torn about giving money to homeless people, but in this case the little voice said to go ahead and do it.

I fished in my pockets. "How about five?" I said, handing him the bigger bill. That blew him away. I got an astonished and happy "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" in return. He sounded like a little kid, having just opened a present under a tree. I felt like I'd done the right thing in this case.

The next day was bright and clear---"Rocky Mountain Bright," as anyone who has lived in that part of the country during the winter knows. After work I indulged in a long stroll around the Capitol Hill district, culminating in a tour of the capitol itself. I'm sort of a connoisseur of American statehouse architecture. The exterior of the Utah capitol reminded me a lot of the one in Little Rock, Arkansas---starkly simply on a barren hilltop. On the inside it felt Italianate, with a roof like the Galleria in Milan, yet quite plain and simple---reminiscent of the Georgia capitol.

Salt Lake City is flush up against the foothills. The area around Capitol Hill, the streets and houses, reminds me of what Boulder would be like, if it were the capital of Colorado instead of Denver.

Of course I spent some time touring the LDS areas around Temple Square. Non-Mormons are not allowed inside Temple, so that was out of the question, but I fulfilled the requirement of doing something Mormon-touristy by going inside the Tabernacle, which is a non-sacred space open to the public. I sat in the pews and admired the giant pipe organ and the empty seats where the famous choir sits.

But I didn't go on any of the organized tours. I liked walking around, but I wanted to do it on my own terms without a sales pitch.

On Saturday morning, the day of the solstice, I checked out of the Plaza, somewhat wistfully leaving my room with its awesome panorama. Outisde, the snow-globe world had returned in the form of a new storm front. After a side trip up through the University of Utah campus, just for sightseeing, I drove out of town and got on I-80, heading towards Park City.

Park City is an old mining town that is a now a skiing center and is best known for the Sundance Film Festival. The monumental remnants of the 2002 Winter Olympics prominently decorated the town.

I killed a couple hours in the afternoon walking up and down the quiet streets (actually it was quite noisy from the snow machine going full blast at the bottom of the mountain). I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they can pull of having a film festival in that kind of place. There's only one proper theater in the whole town. I hiked up on the steep side streets, past the ramshackle ski bum cottages to the sprawling new mansions at the top. I wondered what Bob Redford stays when he comes to town.

I stayed that night at a very nice Best Western plus just down the road by the Interstate. In the morning it was once again foggy and snowy. There is a Murphy's Law of automobile physics, evidently, that windshield wipers will first give out directly in the line of one's sight. Or maybe it's devious planned obsolescence. But why does it happen on the driver's side first?

In any case, the old ones were making me miserable, with all the salt and debris on the road that kept obscuring my vision. I realized I hadn't replaced them since Massachusetts. So on the way through Heber City, I detoured to detour to an auto parts store to buy new windshield wipers for the Bimmer. A miraculous change---it felt like having a new car for twenty bucks.

Back on the road, I headed east on US-40, up over the summit of the pass. On the other side, it was the reverse of what I'd experienced eastern Oregon, where I'd suddenly gone from blue skies to fog. Now, coming down the valley of the Strawberry River, the fog was all gone and the day was clear and bright again. It was perfect driving weather, and the traffic was light enough to make it pleasant.

The recent storm had left a coating of several inches of snow on everything throughout the entire Uintah Basin---and I mean everything. The rugged terrain was uniformly white, and the trees were coated with that powdered-sugar looking snow, as if they were candy (unfortunately many were probably Russian Olive, a notorious invasive species).

Nevertheless it was breathtaking to behold. I kept feeling an impulse to get out and contemplate the tableau, but I had good road, and didn't want to disturb the fates, so I kept driving.

The ubiquitous soft white coating was so bright that it hurt my eyes. Without my sunglasses at hand, it gave me an exquisite headache behind the wheel.

Hence the title of this post. You thought I meant something else?