Tired Road Warrior

Utah because of its exotic scenery and mild weather (even in winter) is an ideal locale to enjoy “outdoor churching,” a permutation of home (or house) churching. The idea is to get a small non-demoninational group together and make pilgrimages to locales like: the Spiral Jetty, the Sun Tunnels, Clarion, Topaz, Horseshoe Canyon, and Gilgal Garden. Each represents a unique man/nature interface that is sure to inspire meditation of some variety. When you get to your pilgrimage site, spend an hour and get to know the surrounding environment, discuss the site’s history and significance, hold hands and have a group prayer, have everyone make a wish, have a group activity, and/or have a picnic.

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In early May 2006, I traveled to Castle Dale, Utah, to do a video interview with Montell Seely. From his back porch, overlooking the riparian pastures adjacent to Cottonwood Creek, Montell can scan the Wasatch Plateau, the mountains his grandfather crossed in 1877 on orders from Brigham Young. As it turns out, Castle Valley–located in the heart of central Utah–was the last region ordered colonized by the Mormon prophet; Brother Brigham died a week after sending his colonization letter.

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The first river basin in Utah to move toward sentience is the Sevier River Basin. In the 1990s, the Sevier River Water Users Association (SRWUA) with an assist from the Bureau of Reclamation, began a systematic program to instrument and automate their river basin. Automation equipment, most of it solar pwered, was installed on all major water control structures, including 3 major reservoirs, 3 re-regulating reservoirs, and 15 diversion structures. Additionally over 15 real-time river and canal monitoring sites and 4 weather stations were equipped with telemetry. All this data is brought back hourly to an unmanned data collection facility (the developing “brain” of the Sevier River network). In 1997, the water users teamed with a local consultant to establish a website (www.sevierriver.org) for the distribution of their real-time and historic information on streamflows, canal diversions, reservoir levels and releases, snowpack, and weather conditions. All these steps constitute the river basin’s first furtive steps toward sentience.

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