This Is the Place: Winding down Parley’s, right around the 215 split, the canyon opens up and suddenly you have an expanse of lavender sky in front of you, with billows of blood orange thunderclouds edged with tangy apricot wisps. And then at the mouth of the canyon—just before the Foothill turnoff—the whole valley opens up just as the sun is setting in the clouds over the lake, and it’s turning the whole western sky an embery red, the color of a low growl. The Salt Lake is glowing bright crimson, like it’s lit from within. You’re struck by the fact that it’s always there, even when you’re not thinking about it, all that gorgeous weirdness. The smell from the sycamores and the dry grasses, warm from the day, mingle into a heady sunset musk. And the whole valley, with the Oquirrhs culminating in that smokestack, and the tufts blooming up from the factory to the north, make it seem simultaneously like it’s a terraformed Martian landscape, and in the same breath—more like a gasp—the most bizarrely beautiful place you’ve ever seen.
This blog post is part of a series in support of the NOWHERE performance. Migration 1.3 words by Amie Tulius; Photo Still from film by Nathan Webster.