Paisley Rekdal - Salt Lake City, UT
I don't know what was more frightening, the rapid fire barking of Hana, one of Paisley Rekdal's beautiful (large) dogs, or the size and chocolate content of the enormous pastry I was served. Both items took much of my concentration during my visit to Rekdal's spectacular and sunny home on a hillside overlooking Salt Lake City.
But I'm exaggerating. I'm given to hyperbole. Hana settled down, and I ate almost half of the pastry. I was unable to lift the other half, such a chocolate-foggy-stupor I was in after a few bites. (I'm just joking about all of this. I love when there's food...not just on this trip, but anytime I'm anywhere. Serve it up. Bring it with you. Leave it in a sack for me to find.)
But in between all of that, Rekdal and I spent part of a sunny spring morning in her front room. She sat on a giant sofa and I was across the room in a large chair. The dogs took turns coming in for love or pastry, and I drank hot peppermint tea out of a heavy ceramic mug.
I was turned on to Rekdal several months ago by a colleague of hers, and I've fallen for her work. She loves the west, the inhospitable quality of it that she discovered years ago when she first moved to Wyoming. Now in Salt Lake City - still a small, somewhat hidden, and awfully misunderstood place to many big city folks - she finds just enough of a mix of things - good restaurants, the towering mountains.
She tells me about the house, about 100 years old, two stories with an attic. She's only been here six months but she's already had to deal with 60 pounds of peaches off the trees in the front yard. (There's a LOT of peach jam in the building; that's all I'm saying.) She's painted the interior already, making it hers. She has her space for working, a private area which she dedicates to writing and nothing else (taxes are done in another room). She's started a garden. She's been here less than a year, but the place she's made is homey and comfortable.
After we talk, we shoot some photos inside. Then we take the dogs out front - where some new flowers are bulging out, purples and yellows. After Shumai eats a little dewy grass, I get a few photos of all of them on the steps. And then I go.
Utah
The trip - which at times has threatened to swallow us whole - is winding down faster than we thought. We are on this last leg through Texas, Utah, and Colorado, and with a couple of days off we found ourselves in southern Utah near two gigantic national parks, Canyonland and Arches.
Like normal tourists, we loaded up the sandwiches and cameras and went for another of a seemingly endless sight-seeing obligation. You know what I mean? You end up in Yuma and someone says, "You gotta see the old jail." So you go. You shoot nine pictures of it. You touch it. You buy a postcard and a t-shirt, then start looking for a Taco Bell.
But as we roll into Arches, we are greeted with towering sandstone spires that reach to the sky, gigantic slabs of red rock, some razor thin, that all crowd the snaking road that leads through the park. It's stunning and humbling, and nothing at all like a normal tourist stop.
We spend most of two full days seeing what we can, hiking across sandy canyons, which sometimes lead right to sudden and beautiful grassy pastures, to see sandstone arches. In the northern section of Canyonlands, we stand on sheer cliffs that fall hundreds of feet and look over hundred mile views. I don't even notice if it's a pepperoni or salami sandwich, if that tells you anything about how the place gets my attention.
As yesterday was winding down, we found a rock outcropping over the Green River valley and sat on the stone, cross legged in complete silence. I thought a lot about the journey, the places we'd seen. I looked for deep reverential meaning it all. Why here now? What's this place about? Why do I get to see it?
I thought about the tremendous toll that the trip has taken on me, the long hours of writing, interviewing. The travel which just blurs towns and states and people together. I think about the maps and the directions. I think about my poor wife - who gets to hear the long version of this paragraph daily - who has stood by me since the nutty idea was born almost a year ago.
Why doesn't she just push my fat ass off this ledge?
William Wenthe - Lubbock, TX
William Wenthe, when referring to his move from bucolic Virginia to hardscrabble Lubbock, Texas, calls it geographic shock. The New Jersey native had made a real home in the area in and around Charlottesville during his pursuit of MA and PhD degrees, so had some adjustments to make when arriving in this splendid but isolated panhandle city.
As an adopted Texan with nearly 15 years in the state of my own, I can appreciate the transition, but also envy anyone who's still living in the gigantic and friendly borders.
But Lubbock is in the flyway for a wide variety of aviary life, and Wenthe - a bird lover since youth - finds that comforting. While we talk in the study of his pretty brick home, Wenthe runs down a long list of birds he sees in the area.
The wildlife in the house is pretty great, too. Zero, the aging and blind - but independent - cat keeps us company during the interview, twice bumping his nose into my intruding tripod, but getting a fair amount of attention in Wenthe's lap. And Eddie, the fiery Corgi makes a welcome appearance early on, alternately barking at and licking the visitor. Wenthe's wife rescued me from Eddie - or maybe Eddie from me - after it was clear I was never going to get to the interview otherwise.
Wenthe tells me about a visit from one of his New York pals a few years ago. As they drove through the barren landscapes north of the city, Wenthe was revelling in the rich tapestry of sky, earth, and clouds, and his pal said: "Boy, there's nothing out here."
It was then that Wenthe knew he'd crossed a threshold. The geographic shock was over. The landscape had taught Wenthe what to see and how to see it, and suddenly Lubbock and environs was home.
