Believing In Place: A Spiritual Geography Of The Great Basin

4. Stories in Stone

✹ The geology of the Great Basin presented a bewildering variety of landforms to nineteenth-century observers. I’m thinking about this as I travel across the region with maps in hand, trying to figure how everything fits together. Maps help greatly here, and one is especially helpful. Among my most prized possessions, an early-twentieth-century geological map of the western United States shows the Great Basin as a buff-colored matrix laced with brightly colored, elongated lens-shaped features. The buff color represents the alluvium-filled valleys, while the multicolored lenses signify the geologically complex mountains. This map was prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey, but it also comes in handy when deciphering the region ’s intricate spiritual geography. Listen closely to the inspirational stories about this region and you will find that they are rooted in bedrock. The rocks and mountains themselves have an important role in this drama. They help us tell stories of immense forces that shape the landscape, and they color our belief about what it means. Consider again the diverse types of rocks and the varied fossils of animals and plants that have intrigued and bewildered humankind since ancient times. To the geologist, they are so many clues used in helping decipher a story of the earth’s history, a history set in motion and operating more or less regularly as rocks take form and then erode; even an occasional catastrophic event—a localized meteor hit, volcanic explosion, a regional earthquake or flooding, continental-scale drought—is a part of the equation. When a meteor smashed into central Nevada in the early twenStories in Stone 4 Indeed, this whole Basin region of the Continent is full of the strangest anomalies of nature, puzzling the science and defying the industry of man, and almost insulting the beneficence of God. —samuel bowles, Our New West (1869) 58 Francaviglia/39-80 6/9/03 6:43 PM Page 58 stories in stone | 59 tieth century,1 it not only lit up the night sky but collided with a landscape contorted by eons of volcanic and tectonic violence. Viewed geologically, the Great Basin is a fragmented landscape created by episodic events that are ultimately linked to the movement of the earth’s crust. The region’s corrugated quality—mountains alternating with valleys— is a direct outcome of catastrophic forces. It inspired geologist Kenneth Deffeyes to state that “the lesson is that the whole thing—the whole Basin and Range [province], or most of it—is alive.” This suggestion of a living geology is unusual, for we have come to think of rocks as dead (that is, inanimate ) and the biosphere as alive. Deffeyes clarifies: “The earth is moving. The faults are moving. There are hot springs all over the province. The world is splitting open and coming apart.”2 This constant motion may seem contradictory , for people often mention the region’s “solitude” and “quietness.” But both the abrupt scarp lines of fairly recent earthquakes and the large areas covered by fresh lava flows suggest otherwise. Once I was shaken awake by an earthquake while camping out in southern Nevada. The trembling sensation lasted for seconds, but seemed like minutes. What had seemed so solid now seemed to be twitching and shrugging. To most people who speed through this region, it seems more dead than alive. On a trip into the Great Basin in late spring of 2000, I met a European traveler—actually a Danish scientist—in Fallon, Nevada. He had driven from Salt Lake City to Fallon, where he’d stopped for the night on a two-day trip to California. Eager to learn about his perceptions of the Great Basin, I asked him what he thought of the drive along Highway 50 across Nevada. He looked over at me, paused for a moment, and then said, “God, that country’s dull . . . and so much of it!” How, I wondered, could what he saw as a “dull” landscape resonate so strongly, even spiritually, to me and to others? In order to register as more something than monotonous, landscape must touch a certain chord in an individual, then be articulated as meaningful and incorporated into broader patterns of storytelling. The Danish scientist had no stories upon which to ground this immense region , and so it remained terra incognita to him. Spiritual geographies require an appreciation of humankind’s experiences in situ. Although the word spiritual may suggest something disassociated from both body and its earthly corollary...