Leaving the green coasts of Washington and Oregon, asserted Wallace Stegner, you travel east to reach The West. So now we follow his trail, taken many years ago, along highway 50, toward Utah. We hope to spend tonight near one of our favorite towns, Torrey, Utah, which is at the west entrance to Capitol Reef National Park, one of our favorite national parks.

We camped last night somewhere in the high desert north of Ely, Nevada, in an area that has seen little use. There is still an intact crust of cryptogrammic soil over much of the earth. We were surrounded by low mountain ranges in a landscape dotted with old junipers. I feel myself continue to relax as I enjoy the clear air, vast distances, and lack of population.

Much of the desert is blooming now, covered with a low, yellow-flowered bush that resembles chamisa, but has a sweeter scent. Yesterday, while searching a dusty road for a campsite, we came upon a number of apiaries in the middle of hundreds of acres of these flowers. The yellow expanse was vivid against a background of hazy, blue mountains in the distance.

“We are fortunate that we both love places like this,” Nancy says to me. She reminds me of how many times we both have been together in the desert, and how, each time, we are reacquainted with one of the important things that hold us together.

Torrey

Tonight we are camping in the National Forest outside Torrey, having had a snack at the El Diablo Café, a bit of an upscale menu, locally renowned for its rattlesnake cakes. Torrey is the quintessential little Mormon town, small, yet with broad streets with familiar names: Main, Center, and the numbers. The streets or their rights-of-way are broad and straight...enough to land a small airplane, and lined, of course, with poplars and cottonwoods. Torrey has a full acequia flowing through the middle of town, and most houses have large gardens.

All the national parks in Utah have their accompanying towns: Moab for Arches and Canyonlands, Springdale for Zion, Tropic for Bryce, and Torrey for Capitol Reef. Of all these, Torrey is the quietest, and most agreeable. You can actually find a room here for $28. Capitol Reef is the least-visited of all the Utah parks, and often, the overseas visitors seem to outnumber the American visitors. A couple of years ago I lost my wallet outside the visitor’s center, and didn’t notice until later that day. After searching several of the places I had visited, I finally returned to the visitor’s center. My wallet had been turned in by a tourist from Japan.
In his story written over 50 years ago, Wallace Stegner lamented the impending development of this area, including the possible building of a “super highway” through what was then known as Capitol Wash. Staying in Fruita, a little settlement just down the road from Torrey known locally for its orchards , Stegner feared that a highway would bring “..entrepreneurs with gas stations and lodges and sad little fly-blown cafes.” The super highway was never built; instead, a national park has preserved the little settlement of Fruita, adding to it the park visitor’s center. (We will go down to the orchards tomorrow to pick fruit.) And, for some reason, the fly-blown cafes haven’t materialized, either, although there are plenty of motels and gas stations on the east side of Torrey. Which is all right, actually, considering that the only other decent lodging to be found in the area is quite a distance in any direction.

But what could eventually happen here is a repetition of something that is occurring all over the American West: a sort of gentrification, or as some might say, Californication. Moab was a harbinger; more recently, St. George. What the Mormon pioneers feared long ago might now be coming to pass: an invasion of Gentiles. In this case, Gentiles with cash from IRA’s, home sales on either coast, and a heavy jones for high-priced coffee drinks.

I like to imagine that Torrey will escape this fate, perhaps because of its remoteness from major highways, airports, and healthcare centers, perhaps because of its long, isolated winters. But my fantasy is tempered by the awareness that places like this that I have loved in the past have eventually become “discovered” and developed.

In a day or so we will continue back to Santa Fe. And I will have plenty of time to meditate on the fact that, of all the places we have visited so far, I am happiest here.