As Good as Venus de Milo's Ass
After waking up in 18-degree weather in Panguitch, Utah, this morning, took the long, dull drive--well, some of it was in white-out, which wasn't as interesting as yesterday's blizzard, but still better than watching 18-wheelers in the rearview--up through Provo, Salt Lake, Ogden.
And then it was time for a detour.
It's about 20 miles from the interstate to the Golden Spike Monument, where the two ends of the first transcontinental railway were joined. Not a lot to see there, even for an avowed train nut like myself.
But if you have a car that can make it, 16 miles past the visitor center is Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Since he built the thing in 1970, it's spent most of its life under the waters of the Great Salt Lake, but it's visible now.
To get there, you have to first face down the cows. At one point, the cows made a box--maybe five cows on each side of the road, and then blocking the road, a line of cows four or five deep--and stared at the car. Clearly a bovine challenge.
Once you get past the cows, there's mud deep enough that my white car is now a brown car, and then the road gets really bad. The last half mile, you kind of have to choose which rock will do the least damage to you when you hit it.
You come around a corner, and there it is, down below, like a fern tendril stretching into the lake.
The sky was pure silver, the lake was silver, the jetty itself was black from the rocks, white from all the salt that has caked on it over the years. The mountains around are a gold shade, and it's all quite stunning.
To be honest, I had expected the jetty to look just like the pictures and be nice, but not especially impressive. But the best way I can describe it is to compare it to the Venus de Milo (digression: "she's better than Venus with all of her charms/better than Venus because she has arms," as my Chaucer professor liked to sing in the middle of class). When you go to the Louvre, the VDM is at the end of a long, straight passage, so you see it from quite a ways off.
And it looks exactly like the pictures. We've seen so many pictures, how could there be anything new?
But if you go to the back, check out her ass, it's a view you've never seen before, and the sheer genius of the carving leaps out.
Spiral Jetty is like that: a bunch of rocks stuck in the middle of nowhere, on the shores of Salt Lake. Shouldn't work. But it does.
It's what glacial moraines would look like, if they had a playful side.
I have no idea if it's allowed or not, but since nobody was around to tell me otherwise, and there were no signs, I walked the spiral. It was like walking the labyrinth in a medieval cathedral, only on a much, much grander scale, and the sky more impressive than even the stained glass in the cathedral in Leon, Spain (which made me fall to my knees and cry, it was so beautiful).
Robert Smithson was a bloody genius.
And then it was time for a detour.
It's about 20 miles from the interstate to the Golden Spike Monument, where the two ends of the first transcontinental railway were joined. Not a lot to see there, even for an avowed train nut like myself.
But if you have a car that can make it, 16 miles past the visitor center is Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Since he built the thing in 1970, it's spent most of its life under the waters of the Great Salt Lake, but it's visible now.
To get there, you have to first face down the cows. At one point, the cows made a box--maybe five cows on each side of the road, and then blocking the road, a line of cows four or five deep--and stared at the car. Clearly a bovine challenge.
Once you get past the cows, there's mud deep enough that my white car is now a brown car, and then the road gets really bad. The last half mile, you kind of have to choose which rock will do the least damage to you when you hit it.
You come around a corner, and there it is, down below, like a fern tendril stretching into the lake.
The sky was pure silver, the lake was silver, the jetty itself was black from the rocks, white from all the salt that has caked on it over the years. The mountains around are a gold shade, and it's all quite stunning.
To be honest, I had expected the jetty to look just like the pictures and be nice, but not especially impressive. But the best way I can describe it is to compare it to the Venus de Milo (digression: "she's better than Venus with all of her charms/better than Venus because she has arms," as my Chaucer professor liked to sing in the middle of class). When you go to the Louvre, the VDM is at the end of a long, straight passage, so you see it from quite a ways off.
And it looks exactly like the pictures. We've seen so many pictures, how could there be anything new?
But if you go to the back, check out her ass, it's a view you've never seen before, and the sheer genius of the carving leaps out.
Spiral Jetty is like that: a bunch of rocks stuck in the middle of nowhere, on the shores of Salt Lake. Shouldn't work. But it does.
It's what glacial moraines would look like, if they had a playful side.
I have no idea if it's allowed or not, but since nobody was around to tell me otherwise, and there were no signs, I walked the spiral. It was like walking the labyrinth in a medieval cathedral, only on a much, much grander scale, and the sky more impressive than even the stained glass in the cathedral in Leon, Spain (which made me fall to my knees and cry, it was so beautiful).
Robert Smithson was a bloody genius.
posted by e. Readicker-Henderson at 7:49 PM
2 Comments:
I'd never heard of this marvel until you mentioned it. Before long I'd pulled up photos and articles about it, but those are just shadows on the cave wall compared to seeing it, and actually standing on the thing, as you have done.
You are an execeedingly fortunate fellow. Don't forget it. This is merely the latest marvel you've seen.
Yeah!
What she said - in spades!
Whatever "in spades" means...
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