_. THEZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2004-JANUARY 2005 POINT By BLANC 3 as ; 5 uch:festory y as my family has is the history of its life here. All that og of us my know of — isto be known in relation to this place: Parcs County..We are’ descended from Halian, Greek, Mexican, Japanese, and..Slovenian immigrants, and have relatively few Mormons as us. I’m proud of my pe of my ~ own county, and I had: to go home. ‘Wendell Berry : I used to live in Wayne County, southern Utah, because ‘cliffs of red Wingate - sandstone form an enormous barricade between Thousand Lakes Mountain and Capitol _Reef National Park. | used to live there so I could watch Capitol Dome and the other Here in Carbon County, my son represents the fifth generation of my family. My cousins- Pinarelli, Andreini, Scavo, Vea, Marasco, and Pero- all live within five miles of the coal mines and farms our.great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers helped create. We have one and only.one other town on all the earth that is ours: San Giovanni en Fiore, in the © mountains of Calabria, Italy. A parallel branch of the family lives there to this ae descendants of one Prot: ue did not come west. thousand-foot bulges of Navajo sandstone collect a dusting of May snow. I used to live there because I could camp at 11,600-foot Bluebell Knoll, the highest point on Boulder Mountain, and because at the mountain’s foot are the Bicknell Bottoms, a lush marsh where mallards and sandhill cranes scavenge the Fremont River for food. Lused to live in Wayne County for the beauty of the place, but at the end of my three years there, I quit stopping at Larb Hollow and Hogan’s Pass, scenic turnouts that - provide a view of five thousand square miles of mostly uninhabited desert, all the way to the LaSal mountain range. In a flash I realized I had become greedy. Every time I stopped to gaze at the colored desert my eyes tried to sop it up, all for myself. The day I quit trying . to make the land mine and mine only I realized that even a place as beautiful as Wayne County could stand one less stranger looking at it with an agenda. With only 2,400 people in a county of that many square miles, Wayne County _ natives feel firmly rooted in place. Towns are small and scattered, so everyone is Wayne County, and that is how people locate themselves in conversation, even among other Utahns. Wayne County is home in the utmost sense to most of these people - descendants of Mormon handcart pioneers who pushed gigantic wooden wheelbarrows across 1,300 The day I quit trying to make the land mine and mine only, | realized that even a place as beautiful as Wayne County could stand one less stranger looking at it with an agenda. miles of plains from Nauvoo, Missouri, to the Utah territory. In 1875, Hugh McClellan and his family tried to subdue the rocky red-dust fields for ranching, and from these first settlers grew a breed as tough and stark as the desert itself. The last family to buy a bailer was still gathering hay with an elevator behind a horse-pulled wagon in 1970, the kids alternately driving the team and tromping hay in the wagon. And other kids eight or ten years old tended sheep camp on Boulder Mountain by themselves, staying out among bears and elk. 1 wanted to fit in among the locals, and had many friends, but I couldn’t fool myself. I come from a different clan, Utahns a hundred and twenty miles north in Carbon Few Americans today have sucha profound experience of home, a generations-old place they must return to. Those of us who have that experience want our children to have it as well. We want to offer them lives in hometowns that are still connected to history, tradition, and land. We want our children to feel, always, that of all the places in the world, they belong here the most. ts [eZee MOAB, folume NEW 3 ler 8 Sole ee : UTAH 50 CENTS Serene per) | Saaiiate Geninemaneaaeae WEST "This ova sure has growed since the last ame we was here. The dern people are making towns everywhere and it’s our fault... Well, we chased off the Indians didn’t we? Killed off all the good bandits? Did it ever occur to you that Sens we done was a mistake? done our work too well, Woodrow. Hell, we ee 2 most of the eee that made this country interesting to begin with, didn’t | | Augustus McCrae to Woodrow F. Call from Lonesome Dove Bo SEES FROM THE SUNNY SLOPES OFLONG AGO.. IO VEM BEI 1991 : IN THIS ISSUE: PO BOX 325 MOAB UTAH Kat? ! ee rn co : - | interviews with: the City Council Candidates Groene a rs, oil, rollerch g & Coors the Cedar Mesa Visitor Center - another g: idea joover’s Great A Rebuttal from Bette Stanton to Jack Campbell Frank Lemon’s Poetry Herb Ringer's American West | .