Cowboy Country
At this stage in my career, it’s rare to make a trip to a place I’ve never been, but that was the case this week when I flew into Salt Lake City. It’s invigorating to negotiate an airport for the first time and get oriented in a new town. The best part of this trip, though, was the 350 mile drive from SLC, UT to Boise, ID. It gave me a strong feeling of what is special about America, and how much variety constitutes the great United States.
The land of northern Utah boasts epic beauty, with the Great Salt Lake sprawling solemnly calm to the west, and the jagged Wasatch mountain range looming to the east. Funneling through these two scenic bookends, I noticed the country slowly opening up to a more arid vista. If the hundred miles on either side of the Utah/Idaho border aren’t officially Big Sky country, it’s an excellent imitation. High golden hills shorn smooth from millennia of harsh winds undulate into a 360-degree horizon, pock-marked with scrub bushes drying rapidly to become future tumbleweeds. Hours of an impossibly blue sky with cumulus rising upward like slow motion fireworks. It’s rugged terrain, with tough sounding towns like Burley, Mountain Home, and Rattlesnake Pass. After a few hours of seeing little marks of human impact, an uncomfortable loneliness sets in, as well as thoughts of what I would do if the car broke down.
As the road curls northwest toward Boise, with the wide blue majesty of the olive tree lined Snake River marking the change in the country, agricultural industry makes its mark. Mile after mile of cattle grazing and potato fields roll past the window. Monolithic, bleached factories of improbable size convert massive mounds of beets into one-pound bags of sugar for the country’s grocery chains. Cattle and vegetable trucks fill the road and, suddenly, Boise. I’m not much of a long distance driver, but the drive through this stunning cowboy country was over in a blink, so beautiful was this new American experience for me.
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