On Landscape
Landscape by Miles Mattison
You get a half mile or so from Main Street in Green River and there really isn’t much of anything around—the road you came on dried and cracked. You see a few dots skimming by on the highway off in the distance, the town’s few commercial buildings flanked by residents’ homes. You can’t hear a thing. You imagine the buzz of kids on their ATVs and dirt bikes as you follow the tracks in the dirt with your eyes. It can be comforting: something to follow, something to guide you. Looking back at the town, patches of green here and there spot the land and grow dense around the river’s edge, where the water never ceases to rush. And between buildings, where the sun doesn’t scorch the foliage, the same places the icy remnants of snow would stick around, escaping the angled winter light. A few cottonwoods, the tamarisk. Sometimes you can see the golf course, and you might chuckle. A golf course in the desert. What’s that doing out here?
The summer brings a wave of life to the town. The chairs in front of the coffee shop fill as the day breaks for the daily gathering of friends, family. The hotel parking lots bustle with overnighters packing up to continue on their journey. The hum of West Winds truck stop rumbles as truckers wake, fueling up and skating out of town. In the slanted morning light, a few people might mill in the streets, before the heat of the day reaches the asphalt, and the cycle of passersby continues. The land beams bright all around in the rising sun. A few clouds might bring a warm afternoon shower. Ray’s Tavern fills up for lunch, and you might even have to wait at The Tamarisk for a table at dinner.
Maybe it’s the place that I’m from clouding my judgement, the way the freeway divided that place. Maybe it’s the dried dirt, cracking in the heat under my feet. The smell of sagebrush burning in the summer sun instead of the rich, moist soil lined with ferns; the same colors and shapes in all directions, instead of a ridge or the sea. But I’ve never been able to feel where north is here, the way I can most places I go—that innate sense of direction. No. Here I know where the town is based on where I’ve come from; I use landmarks and single lane roads to remind myself that all I have to do is turn around to get back to safety.
Because here the land is different. The soil stacked in shelves of golden yellows, tans, shades of white, even reds and deep grays at times. Rolling mounds of, well, is it dirt? Is it sand? You try walking closer to find out but the expanse of the desert deceives your sense of distance. You make markers of debris you’ve passed. Hopefully you can see the Book Cliffs or maybe the Swell somewhere on the horizon. Breathing deep, the air thick from the heat. The sun bouncing off the bright hues of the ground and heating it all over again. Your lips chapped, skin red hot. You try to sip water, but you can feel your body fading.
The land here, the air here, this place here: it tests you.
Escaping to a somewhat cooler room, aided by a swamp cooler, pushing moist air into the enclosed space. Looking out the window, out at the Book Cliffs, those ancient relics of fallen land slowly sifting to the ground below, cropping up from virtually nothing. Waiting for the chance to go back up as you recharge your batteries in whatever refuge you can find. It calls to you, this land.
And as the leaves fall into autumn, so does the town. The fields of melon crops go to seed and are milled for the next season’s planting. The local melon stands empty and shut for the coming months. People take refuge, finding warmth from the fire and family around them. Main Street, where the majority of locally owned businesses lie, slows to a trickle. The coffee shop seldom opens. OK Anderson park is deserted, its trees and grasses browned from the chill. The land now, is a framed picture out the glass of a car window, your living room, office or the Chow Hound.
You start to understand what this place is. You start to think about all the things that have drawn people here in the past, in the peak of Green River’s population: a uranium mine left now as a black pyramid Superfund site, a missile test site left now as defunct structures, stripped of its working parts. The oddity of agriculture here in this arid place, a small group of melon and feed farmers. The lure of the wide open West, the blank canvas of possibility. It’s powerful land, demanding your respect. You start to see how people could thrive here together.
