The first seasonal roads have shut for the year, which leaves me, my paintbrushes and a very full gas tank.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – It has come to my attention that the mountains have closed. Not metaphorically, like a ward activities committee in the week before the bake sale, but literally, with gates, signs and a statement from the state. I wish to record my grief, my plans and my complete failure to leave the house on time.
Notice of closure
According to KSL’s report on the Alpine Loop and Guardsman Pass closing for the season, Guardsman Pass, which links Big Cottonwood Canyon with the Wasatch Back, closed at 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 30. The Alpine Loop, State Route 92 from Pine Hollow in American Fork Canyon up to Aspen Grove above Sundance Resort, closed at 7 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 2. These were the first seasonal road closures of the year, and the state has not yet announced dates for six others.
The reason is simple. The roads are steep and narrow, and the Utah Department of Transportation says it is too difficult to provide winter plowing operations. An incoming storm could bring a foot or more of snow to the Upper Cottonwood Canyons by that Monday afternoon. If you wish to visit Sundance in the meantime, you can reach it through Provo Canyon. Both routes typically reopen in the spring, once conditions allow, which is a phrase I find very hard to read without picturing a person holding a thermos.
TownLift added that Empire Pass stays open and quoted the state’s closing message: “Thanks for a great season, we appreciate everyone taking the time to read the signs and park responsibly!” I think that is the nicest thing a government department has ever said to me, and I have not even parked anywhere near the signs.
What I will miss
I had planned to drive up one last time before the gate went down, with the car packed like a stagecoach: a folding stool, a lunch of cold roll and cheese, and a 12 by 16 panel I bought at an art supply sale for what I can only describe as an optimistic price. The aspens on the pass turn the color of a very good marmalade for about four days. I managed three of them.
The trouble with painting outdoors in Utah in late autumn is that the weather treats your brush like a rumor. You mix a nice warm gold, you look up, and the entire valley has been replaced by a gray curtain with snow on it. I painted the curtain. It is, to be fair, the most accurate thing I have made all season.
The commute, in rhyming slang
This morning the commute took one hour and ten minutes, which I have decided to treat as a form of reading time. The I-15 corridor was doing what it does in the first week of cold weather, which is to behave as though snow were a new invention. Everyone slowed down in sympathy. A man in a truck signalled his lane change in advance, which felt like a lovely personal letter.
I have been working on translating the Utah commute into Cockney rhyming slang, partly for my editors in London and partly to keep myself from using the horn. The frog and toad, which is the road, was packed. I could see nothing but brake lights and the plates of meat of a pedestrian at the crossing. I took a butcher’s at the dashboard and saw I was at the bottom quarter of a tank. Anyone who wants the proper vocabulary can find it in this guide to Cockney rhyming slang, which I keep in the glove compartment alongside the napkins and the spare hymn book.
The diesel and the dollars
At a red light I read a headline that made me forget about my own tank. farm.fm’s report on the USDA giving farmers 8 billion for diesel they already burned sounds like the plot of a novel I would assign to the seminar and then not read myself. I will not pretend to understand farm accounting. I do know that when I buy gasoline I cannot be reimbursed afterward by a federal program, only by the small satisfaction of arriving.
It did give me an idea. If there were a program for people who had already used up their paint, I would be first in line, and I would write the application in the margins of a library book. The line outside the art supply store would be a sight. It would be mostly adults with brush rolls, all of us holding a coupon and a grievance.
Evening: what I painted instead
Since the pass is closed, I stayed in and painted the mountains from a photograph I took in better weather, which is the legitimate use of a photograph. The Wasatch is easy to paint from memory because it behaves like a family portrait. The peaks line up, the snow sits on the shoulders, and one cloud always refuses to stay in the frame.
I also took a plate of lime jello salad and a chocolate pie to the ward bake sale planning meeting, where Sister Abernathy greeted me with a clipboard and the news that I had been put down for the table with the cash box. I have been promoted, in other words, for no reason connected to my skills. I accepted with grace. I even remembered to say thank you.
My friends at Bohiney Magazine have asked how Utahns cope when the roads close. The honest answer is that we do what we did before: we look at the mountains from a safe distance, we say how pretty they are, and we make a casserole. The closure is not an end. It is a long, quiet reminder that some of the best views are the ones you get to by being patient and not leaving the house.
The gate will open in spring. I will be on the road, easel in the trunk, hoping for aspens. In the meantime I have fresh canvas, a full thermos and the sincere hope that the snow looks as good on the painting as it does on the pass.
There are more of my daily notes at The London Prat, including the full ledger of my commute minutes, which I would rather you read than I recount.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/