When you live in Salt Lake City and you want to drink on Sunday, or gamble anytime, your best option is to board one of several party busses that take you across a hundred miles of wind-swept, sage-covered desert, to the town of Wendover, Nevada. Or you can do like the students in one of my southwest literature classes did, and make the trip in a biodiesel-powered school bus with flowers painted all over it. Our mission however, was that of education, not libation. As I wrote about in a previous post, the destination was the decommissioned Air Force base now known as Wendover Airfield.
Driving across the barren west desert
As you head west along the southern shores of the Great Salt Lake, the lake gradually disappears and becomes nothing but a flat expanse of salt stretching as far as the eye can see. You still think you’re next to the lake, but the water you’re seeing is nothing more than a mirage hovering over the hot, white surface. It’s even hard to believe that all that white stuff is salt, but then you drive by the Morton salt plant, where massive trucks are driving around, scooping the stuff up to be sent to your grocery store.
A giant sculpture emerges on the horizon
There are no trees, except for one, standing tall and healthy about 25 miles east of Wendover.
“Metaphor: The Tree of Utah,” is an 87-foot tall sculpture created in the early 1980s by the Swedish artist, Karl Momen. If you stop near the “Tree of Life,” as it’s sometimes called, and are unsure of exactly what you’re looking at, my suggestion is that you don’t worry too much about it. After all, you’re looking at something instead of what you’ve been looking at for the last hundred miles, which is nothing.
I think the tree is pretty cool, especially the pieces on the ground that resemble seed hulls of some kind, presumably cast off from the flowering tree as it emerged from the salty lakebed. The top pieces are interesting, their vibrant color and texture achieved through the use of rocks and minerals found in Utah.
A plaque at the base of the tree reads, "A hymn to our universe whose glory and dimension is beyond all myth and imagination." These words are from Ode to Joy, by Friedrich Schiller, and are also incorporated into the chorus of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The next time you're driving either direction, through the town of Wendover, be sure to check out the Tree of Life. It's pretty hard to miss!
This article originally appeared on a site called Environmental Graffiti, which was then purchased by Scribol, a content mill that still exists, but has been de-listed by Google.
References
http://www.utah.com/amusement/metaphor_tree.htm
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2230
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor:_The_Tree_of_Utah