The Great Basin's uncharismatic wilderness

In the battle royal over Utah wilderness, Technicolor redrock canyons take center stage. The Great Basin half of Utah is a forgotten backwater.

"The Great Basin is terra incognita to most people," says Ken Rait of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, "That's why the Great Basin wilderness areas did fare better than canyonlands in the Utah congressional bill. There's not as much controversy. They're not as well known. The canyonlands are more charismatic. There are some really special places in the West Desert. It's good that there are places that are out there that might be protected from the masses because they're not charismatic."

"Utahns sit here with cool beautiful canyons, on the one hand, and on the other, the damn salt desert," says Ted Wilson, former mayor of Salt Lake City. Utahns are quite uneducated about the West Desert and the Great Salt Lake. It's sad. The West Desert is a special place. We've permitted it to become a dumping ground.

"We've allowed the government to take over the land for Hill Air Force Base's test ranges, for Tooele to be a huge incinerator for nerve gas. When we want to dump something we go west with it. Our idea of a dumping hole is out there. Now it's the whole country's notion.

"I think the Great Basin is slowly becoming more a part of Utahns lives. When people think of a family picnic, maybe they'll think of going to the Stansbury Mountains, or the Oquirrhs, or Cedar Valley. Some of the valleys of the Great Basin still provide something you can't find anywhere else."

"It's a class issue," says author Terry Tempest Williams "The Great Basin is more working class. That's where people go drive their off road vehicles. It's a place for hunting and camping. It's close to Salt Lake City. The Colorado Plateau is sexier, more exotic. The canyonlands are tied to Indian country. The Oquirrhs and the West Desert are tied to industry. Kennecott, Geneva Steel, Hercules, Thiokol. The usage of the Great Basin by industry and the military, took it out of use by people.

"I think there are physical and psychological obstacles that stop people from venturing West. Everything about the Great Basin asks us to define our sense of beauty. The Great Basin taught me how to see. It's a taste acquired through residency. That's where I learned ecological literacy, rabbit, red-tailed hawk, avocets, stilts, mule deer. I spent hours watching savannah sparrows, little nondescript birds, while my brothers and cousins hunted.

"An oasis for the birds. That is quintessential Great Basin. I know nothing more beautiful than silver sage after rain, a floating island. All of that country shimmers. You can almost tell the Great Basin by quality of light. West. That's always where our gaze is."

"I think of the hours we've spent watching the sun set," says Terry's husband, Brooke Williams. "People think of it as desolate, as real desert. That's just starting to change really. It's really wild because of that. It is a hard landscape. I have never been more uncomfortable than being out there. The Deep Creeks are the most remote mountain range in the lower 48. The Great Basin will take care of itself. Nothing will happen to a place with so many negatives."