Time Travel
Southern Utah has some of the most uniquely beautiful terrain that you'll ever find anywhere on this earth. This land of almost unearthly beauty also is so inhospitable to man that much of this area -- Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Canyon Reef National Park, Arches National Park and Bridges National Monument -- was never home to anyone beyond itinerant hunting parties, until Brigham Young sent intrepid Mormon pioneers to transform this desolate landscape with fields of cotton and orchards of fruit.
Progress has changed what those first settlers found here, but it’s still easy to leave behind the highways and air conditioning that makes this region accessible and habitable and step into scenes that could be set in 1908, 1008 or even before.
We spent two weeks squeezing through the undulating slot canyons of Zion, scrambling among Bryce Canyon's minaret-like hoodoos, arches, natural bridges and horseback riding mile after mile of wind-scrubbed, sun-bleached slick rock. We were awestruck, as much by the sights as by the millennia that nature took to form them. In comparison to them, a human lifespan is less than that of a fruit fly to us.
That makes these parks places where you feel as though you can transcend time. And our family had many such moments when we were there last month. One came after a few days of very physical activity. We'd done an early morning "canyoning" expedition, squeezing through slot canyons and doing 60-foot rappels down vertical rock faces. We'd slogged three miles through the murky waters that obscure the rocks and sudden drop-offs of Zion's fabled Narrows, a 16-mile gorge whose
walls tower up to 2000 feet deep over the Virgin River. Then we'd floated three miles on inner tubes down a more benign and sun-drenched stretch of the river.
To keep our kids from rebelling, I had carefully scheduled all these outings early in the morning, in order to beat the 100 degree afternoon heat, so that our daughters could spend the hottest part of the day poolside. In the evening, however, after the seasonable thunderstorms rolled through, the temperatures would drop, the breeze would pick up and we'd get restless – at least my husband and I did.
So we would drag our kids out with us. One evening the meteorological drama performing on the horizon was irresistible. Distant storm clouds rumbled thunder and flashed lightning. That precluded the canyon rim walk my husband proposed. Instead, we opted to stay low and drove out of Springdale, the town that is the commercial gateway to Zion, to visit the ghost town of Grafton.
Just minutes off the highway, you leave gas stations, rock shops and hotels behind, finding yourself dwarfed in a landscape as enormous as it is barren. Rocky red hills and outcroppings give way to the occasional ranch, whose irrigated fields are a startling green contrast to the red rock surrounding you.
Asphalt turned to gravel, gravel to sand and we rounded an outcropping to find a choice of roads (when roads are nothing but ruts, they're easy to make). We guessed left and there found a little graveyard surrounded by a brave white picket fence, the kind you'd expect to see around a neat, green small town cemetery in Vermont. But this one surrounded a cemetery of sand-scrubbed headstones sticking out of the red earth.
The sun was setting and the wind accompanying an approaching thunderstorm whipped up the dust as we got out of our car. It was as desolate a piece of earth as I could ever imagine. We stood to read the inscriptions. Three were for two brothers, and the wife of one of them, killed by Indians. There were also two best friends, girls ages 13 and 14, killed in an accident on a swing and buried together. One couple lost five children over a decade – and none ever lived beyond the age of nine.
The road led from the graveyard down to cottonwoods that broke the red dust. We followed the road down to the start of old pioneer orchards and two crumbling cabins. Just beyond them lay the main street of the town of Grafton, one of many satellite towns built by Mormons intent upon developing a strong agricultural base.
The church, which also doubled as the school, was built of bricks made from mud. Adjacent on the hard red sand was another mud brick building, this one a neat, two-story house, and a rather a prosperous looking one at that, with a porch, a basement and large front room backed by a kitchen. Across the dirt road was a log cabin, still awaiting restoration, but with a front gate, sheds and other outbuildings still standing in its backyard. It was a quiet scene bursting with drama. The setting sun backlit the clouds, clouds were piling up above us, getting increasingly bigger and darker, and the rising wind kicked up more dust.
We weren't alone. In the fields of the last ranch we'd passed, a dozen or so cars were parked and a small crowd was singing hymns. You couldn't help but wonder who of those souls whose headstones we'd just read were humming along.
If ever there was a scene -- complete with its own soundtrack -- to inspire anyone to become a cinematographer, this was it. According to local lore, Grafton been the set for a number of movies. But it's not a place that needs moviemakers -- it's clearly bursting with untold stories. Our 13-year-old could not stop taking photos of everything, from the buildings silhouetted against the sky to the detail of an old gate or a cornice on a porch. But our six-year-old, with a limited tolerance for drama, wanted to go.
As a few raindrops hit, settling the dust, we walked out of the last yard, taking care to shut the gate behind us. We dropped a contribution into the Grafton Heritage Partnership Project (www.graftonheritage.org) tin. It was our thank-you to this memorial for those intrepid pioneers, the lives they built and how they -- and others like them -- made the foundations for ours. Then we got back into the car and drove back to the present. After all, it's where we live. But the beauty of Grafton and Zion, and all those places like them, is their power to remind us about people, places and times that once were.
Progress has changed what those first settlers found here, but it’s still easy to leave behind the highways and air conditioning that makes this region accessible and habitable and step into scenes that could be set in 1908, 1008 or even before.
We spent two weeks squeezing through the undulating slot canyons of Zion, scrambling among Bryce Canyon's minaret-like hoodoos, arches, natural bridges and horseback riding mile after mile of wind-scrubbed, sun-bleached slick rock. We were awestruck, as much by the sights as by the millennia that nature took to form them. In comparison to them, a human lifespan is less than that of a fruit fly to us.
That makes these parks places where you feel as though you can transcend time. And our family had many such moments when we were there last month. One came after a few days of very physical activity. We'd done an early morning "canyoning" expedition, squeezing through slot canyons and doing 60-foot rappels down vertical rock faces. We'd slogged three miles through the murky waters that obscure the rocks and sudden drop-offs of Zion's fabled Narrows, a 16-mile gorge whose
walls tower up to 2000 feet deep over the Virgin River. Then we'd floated three miles on inner tubes down a more benign and sun-drenched stretch of the river.
To keep our kids from rebelling, I had carefully scheduled all these outings early in the morning, in order to beat the 100 degree afternoon heat, so that our daughters could spend the hottest part of the day poolside. In the evening, however, after the seasonable thunderstorms rolled through, the temperatures would drop, the breeze would pick up and we'd get restless – at least my husband and I did.
So we would drag our kids out with us. One evening the meteorological drama performing on the horizon was irresistible. Distant storm clouds rumbled thunder and flashed lightning. That precluded the canyon rim walk my husband proposed. Instead, we opted to stay low and drove out of Springdale, the town that is the commercial gateway to Zion, to visit the ghost town of Grafton.
Just minutes off the highway, you leave gas stations, rock shops and hotels behind, finding yourself dwarfed in a landscape as enormous as it is barren. Rocky red hills and outcroppings give way to the occasional ranch, whose irrigated fields are a startling green contrast to the red rock surrounding you.
Asphalt turned to gravel, gravel to sand and we rounded an outcropping to find a choice of roads (when roads are nothing but ruts, they're easy to make). We guessed left and there found a little graveyard surrounded by a brave white picket fence, the kind you'd expect to see around a neat, green small town cemetery in Vermont. But this one surrounded a cemetery of sand-scrubbed headstones sticking out of the red earth.
The sun was setting and the wind accompanying an approaching thunderstorm whipped up the dust as we got out of our car. It was as desolate a piece of earth as I could ever imagine. We stood to read the inscriptions. Three were for two brothers, and the wife of one of them, killed by Indians. There were also two best friends, girls ages 13 and 14, killed in an accident on a swing and buried together. One couple lost five children over a decade – and none ever lived beyond the age of nine.
The road led from the graveyard down to cottonwoods that broke the red dust. We followed the road down to the start of old pioneer orchards and two crumbling cabins. Just beyond them lay the main street of the town of Grafton, one of many satellite towns built by Mormons intent upon developing a strong agricultural base.
The church, which also doubled as the school, was built of bricks made from mud. Adjacent on the hard red sand was another mud brick building, this one a neat, two-story house, and a rather a prosperous looking one at that, with a porch, a basement and large front room backed by a kitchen. Across the dirt road was a log cabin, still awaiting restoration, but with a front gate, sheds and other outbuildings still standing in its backyard. It was a quiet scene bursting with drama. The setting sun backlit the clouds, clouds were piling up above us, getting increasingly bigger and darker, and the rising wind kicked up more dust.
We weren't alone. In the fields of the last ranch we'd passed, a dozen or so cars were parked and a small crowd was singing hymns. You couldn't help but wonder who of those souls whose headstones we'd just read were humming along.
If ever there was a scene -- complete with its own soundtrack -- to inspire anyone to become a cinematographer, this was it. According to local lore, Grafton been the set for a number of movies. But it's not a place that needs moviemakers -- it's clearly bursting with untold stories. Our 13-year-old could not stop taking photos of everything, from the buildings silhouetted against the sky to the detail of an old gate or a cornice on a porch. But our six-year-old, with a limited tolerance for drama, wanted to go.
As a few raindrops hit, settling the dust, we walked out of the last yard, taking care to shut the gate behind us. We dropped a contribution into the Grafton Heritage Partnership Project (www.graftonheritage.org) tin. It was our thank-you to this memorial for those intrepid pioneers, the lives they built and how they -- and others like them -- made the foundations for ours. Then we got back into the car and drove back to the present. After all, it's where we live. But the beauty of Grafton and Zion, and all those places like them, is their power to remind us about people, places and times that once were.