Utah 2020

(Ute)

I lived in the suburbs of Salt Lake City during the winter of 2020 - 2021 when the whole world was on pause from the global coronavirus pandemic. I didn’t really have a home during that time, having just got out of the Navy in July of the previous year, moved to Brooklyn in the fall, and then had my school year, social circle, and all my plans disrupted by the paralysis of modern society.

I thought I’d go to somewhere where winter could be fun, and explore a new place.

I’d like to have had a better impression of Utah, but I found a completely new land, an almost foreign people, and a sprawling grid of identical developments, smogging up the beltways and lining up at red lights. Fencing off the mountains and building shopping centers and parking lots and backyards in front of and in defiance of these grand vistas. As a veteran, I objectively found a new blend of America, an America that was transplanted and watered with a sprinkler in a valley amongst the wild desert.

On the surface it was harmless enough, but in the midst of a mental health struggle these are the images I was making and what I was feeling at the time. Frustrated, lost, bored. Utah had been named for the Ute tribe, but now the only mention of that indigenous namesake was in the local state university’s football team.

I felt it was a land of contradictions, where Man obscured Nature.