Believing In Place: A Spiritual Geography Of The Great Basin

Introduction

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, two very different events reminded Americans and the world about the power of religion in defining place. The first, which occurred on September 11, 2001, will live in infamy as a horrendous act perpetrated by the darkest side of religion. That religion, a brand of radical Islamic fundamentalism, revealed to the world how exclusive , intolerant, and fanatical some faiths can become. Those unforgettable events on September 11 also had a geographical dimension, for they revealed how tempting symbols on our East Coast—the World Trade Center towers in New York and massive public buildings in Washington, D.C.—had become to international terrorism. Significantly, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center quickly transformed a commercial location into what Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called “a Holy Place.” Six months after September 11, twin beams of white light soared skyward from the World Trade Center site to commemorate the victims, a moving tribute underscoring the important role that places play in our search for meaning.1 Several months after September 11, a second event also focused the world’s attention on the role of religion in defining place. In February 2002, some two thousand miles west of Ground Zero, the Winter Olympics were held in Utah. Although the possibility of terrorist acts kept security on high alert, the three-week-long event was serene if not entirely free of controversy. Television broadcasts from the Winter Olympics repeatedly conveyed one reassuring image that consisted of three components—the snow-covered, bedrock-solid Wasatch Mountains, at the foot of which lay Salt Lake City’s jeweled skyline, which was in turn crowned by the spires of the Mormon Temple. Religion had played a significant role in the Winter Olympics, but this time it revealed religion’s positive and nonsectarian side. The Mormons—as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are called—were instrumental in conceiving, orchestratIntroduction xiii Francaviglia/FM(22) 6/9/03 6:30 PM Page xiii ing, promoting, and hosting the Winter Olympics. In a remarkably sensitive move, the Mormons had decided not to push their faith on others by proselytizing, thus unconditionally accommodating visitors of diverse faiths. In addition to enabling the Mormons to showcase their increasingly inclusive religion, the “Salt Lake Olympics” subtly reinforced the belief that the Intermountain West is somehow buffered or sequestered from the terrors of the outside world. Symbolically, the prospect of peace from a violent outside world is exactly what had brought Mormons to this stunning , mountain-protected location in the first place. The isolated region that the Mormons first encountered in 1847 is the subject of this book. This region beyond the Rocky Mountains is sometimes called the Intermountain West, but was widely known as the Great Basin when the Mormons arrived. Although the Latter-day Saints transformed portions of the Great Basin into their spiritual homeland shortly after their arrival, this region was, and remains, home to people whose ancestors have lived here for thousands of years. These Native peoples’ spiritualities were, and remain, closely linked to all aspects of the place—its climate, topography , plants, animals. In this book, I hope to tell the story of how the Great Basin’s environment resonates in the spiritual lives of all people, Native and non-Native, Mormon and non-Mormon, resident and traveler. Believing in Place takes readers on a journey (or rather journeys) into one of America’s most unique and underappreciated regions. In the process , it addresses two important and interrelated, but sometimes overlooked , issues—spirituality and place—that are of growing interest to academics and our popular culture. Well before September 11, 2001, a renewed interest in spirituality was apparent in America, evident in the success of the popular television show Touched by an Angel. How significant was this quest for spirituality at the dawn of the twenty-first century? According to James Redfield, a 1998 Gallup poll “contains a revealing finding : Eighty-two percent of those surveyed reported that spiritual growth was a very important part of their lives.”2 Part of a broader search to “rediscover the world’s mysteries,” this growing belief in the importance of spirituality is predicted to be among the five most significant trends that will characterize human behavior in the twenty-first century.3 That search for something profoundly spiritual has coincided with a second major movement in recent years—a growing interest in the meaning of place. On one level...