There is no understanding of place without context. Earth is simply dirt beneath one’s feet until the history of a place is understood. Whatever it is that draws someone to visit Muir’s Yosemite or Abbey’s Arches tempted me to explore the Wah Wah Mountains of Southwest Utah. The investment of learning about the natural and historical underpinnings of these places through pages turned creates such a connection to them that they feel like old friends even, as in the case of the Wah Wahs, if that history is fiction.
A few years ago I started listening to the self proclaimed first podcast only novel. It is a science-fiction book called
Earthcore by Scott Sigler. It tells a story of aliens, prospectors and corporations all fighting over a platinum find in the Wah Wah Mountains, a place described in the book as requiring six hours of hiking and three miles of driving to find anything resembling a road. It sounded like my kind of place. It was also a world away from the days of my youth in the middle of Missouri.
I went on to subsequently take jobs in Georgia and then Utah. It struck me only recently, as I searched for an audiobook to help fill a drive, that I was in the same state as the Wah Wah Mountains. A quick search reveled I was living a mere hour from the mountains that had intrigued me when I first heard of them. I started researching the range. It became clear pretty quickly that the mountains that had appeared in the book were quite different from those that were on my computer screen.
None of these differences bothered me much. Truth, as it turned out, was more interesting. The Wah Wahs are as remote as they had sounded in the book. A highway does separate the northern from the southern range but the range is large enough for six hours of hiking to be reasonable. Even the highway that runs through the range is considered one of the more lonely highways in the nation. The mountains that exist in the book are home to aliens and platinum. The mountains in reality are home to abandoned mines, underground springs and desert creatures. While the Wah Wah range doesn’t contain platinum, it is known for its gems. It is one of only a handful of places in the world where red beryl can be found. Apparently the author had done his research.
Picture via Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0
Also true to the book, finding information on the history of the range is difficult. The web presence of the range consists of a few academic papers on the geology, mentions of red beryl and a scattering of trip reports to the high point of the Northern and Southern ranges. At a little over 9,000 feet it is a nondescript mountain range in an area filled with National Parks and geologic wonders. Yet, the Wah Wahs offer something else entirely.
My visit to the range was an opportunity for solitude and connection to a place I knew only from spoken words. The book being fiction only stroked my curiosity. Only a visit would separate the truth from the prose. The author had made the Wah Wahs feel alive. That is something I had to experience.
The area is largely owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Because the highway splits the range, the Wah Wahs demand attention as they extend toward the horizon on both sides of the road. I turned off the highway and onto the gravel road. The road through Pine Valley looked to go on forever in a sea of browns and greens. More than once I had the feeling of being lost that can only really be understood by someone who has been on poorly improved Forest Service or BLM roads that get crossed every couple of minutes by some other road, all seemingly going to different nowheres. I found my turn, took it and parked the car when the going got rough.
I walked past entrance after entrance to abandoned mines. All of the mines caught me with their names. There was the Revenue Mine, Tasso Mine, Lou Mine and others. One after another. I alternated between envisioning the real men who entered these mines and the characters from the book, both descending deep into the earth. I wondered about the motives of each.
I hiked my way up the mountain and rested in the hard to come by shade of the Pinyon Pine, Mountain Mahogany and Juniper scrubland. My mind went to the many times the book talked of the stillness of the place. The view extended several miles and two states. The range was not overflowing with life. Water is hard to find in the dry part of the year. Yet, there were several signs of life. The bulk of the wildlife on the mountain were bird species and an occasional lizard or two.
Funeral mountain, as the book had dubbed a specific peak, had a feeling of dread over it. I wanted to know if I would feel something eerie as I summited the high point of the range. The feeling never came. Only the view occupied my thoughts.
I am indebted to the author, to all authors, that have given me a reason to travel to the many temples of nature. Their passion is infectious. Their words are the key to exploration and understanding. Each great place needs its staunch supporters and every wilderness its defenders.
