Mountains, Moose & Mormons

Tuesday, September 11th

Between the matinee and the evening show on Sunday, I met up with Mom and Dad for dinner. We were joined by Cindy (Mom's college room-mate), her husband and daughter. Mom and Cindy practically ran to each other across the restaurant laughing and squealing. It was great to see. It was also fun to see photos of my Mom sitting on the floor of her dorm room in Snyder/Phillips, smoking and playing cards! Sadly, I had to dine and dash back to the theatre to prepare for the evening performance while the former room-mates caught up.

I stole this photo of the marquee from Fran's blog (as I did many of the pictures accompanying this post), my own photos are still out for developing...

The five of them came to the 7:00 PM show Sunday night. The audience was great: there were clearly some Python fans in the audience and they were all having a great time. When Patsy went out into the audience to pick the "fortunate" peasant, I was upstage helping set some scenery. I came running down to peer around the curtain, however, when the peasant said her name was "Carol". Jeff (Patsy) had inadvertently picked my Mom out of the audience and brought her up on stage. Mom was sure that I had set her up (which I hadn't - the house seats aren't supposed to be in the area of the probable peasant location) but she played along brilliantly. During his costume change, Michael (King Arthur) said to me: "Was that your Mum? She was lovely!" Mom even made it into the show report: "Unbeknownst to all of us, tonight's peasant was Jovon's Mom!!!" I'll have to get Dad to scan the Polaroid the cast took onstage with her, it's a great snap. All five of them enjoyed the show immensely.

After the show, the show's producers took the crew and management out for a late supper and drinks at Spencer's. Spencer's is one of Salt Lake City's nicest steak houses. We were there to fete our departing Head Carpenter, Keith, and to welcome his replacement, Justin. The entire crew turned out for drinks, steaks, dessert and more drinks. Everyone got on famously and had a great couple of hours in each other's social company.

In our private dining room at Spencer's.

Monday morning Mom, Dad and I took off for the mountains. Earlier in the weeks Fran and Chris Gurr had gone for a walk in the mountains and come across a couple of grazing moose. Their encounter piqued my interest, and I did some research about where to see a moose. We started out near Alta, Utah. Alta is in Little Cottonwood Canyon. In the winter, Alta is famous as the home of Snowbird and Alta ski resorts. Without their 50' of winter snow, it's beautiful country and criss-crossed with hiking trails. Our first trek was about a mile and a half round trip. We hiked up to see Cecret Lake. We rose about 460 feet into the mountains (from 9,410 feet at the parking lot to 9,870 at the lake) along the trail. The lake was beautiful: still and ranging from deep blue to green. The lake wasn't very big: 220 yards from end to end and 120 yards wide according to Google Earth. Dad hiked all the way around it and I mostly sat on a high boulder and just took it in. The silence up there in the mountains was truly deafening sometimes. The air was so crisp and clear that I could easily hear Dad's footsteps across the lake and the grasshoppers' wings were a startling noise. There were some bear tracks in the mud at the water's edge along with something with hooves and a couple of my hand prints from a fall off a rock that left me pretty muddy.

I took this video with my cell phone while seated on a boulder along the shore of Cecret Lake.

After we hiked back to the car, we drove into town for some water and snacks before we took on a more challenging hike. We hiked from the Sunny Side Parking Area (elevation 9,375 feet) up to overlook Lake Catherine and then on up to Sunset Pass (elevation 10,500 feet) in about a mile and a third (as the crow flies). We huffed and puffed our way up the mountain questioning why, exactly, we were doing this to ourselves, but the view from the top put any doubts to rest. Looking down from near the top of Sunset Peak you could see for miles: back over Alta and the Little Cottonwood Canyon and on across Lake Catherine to Brighton and the Big Cottonwood Canyon. We descended back to the car in less than half the time it took us to climb up, passing through a couple of alpine meadows, stands of aspen, birch and lodge pole pines and all sorts of neat geological formations, but seeing nothing larger than ground squirrels, chipmunks and kangaroo rats.

Google Earth's representation of our two hikes.

Hike #1 was from the Cecret Lake Parking Area (Center) to Cecret Lake (at Right).

Hike #2 began at the Sunnyside Parking Area (Down-Left) and went up to the Picture Milepost and Sunset Peak (in the Upper-Left).

I stole this photo from a link on Google Earth, but this is the view of Lake Catherine from the spot labled Picture Milepost on the map above. We took a photo of the three of us against this backdrop that I sincerely hope turns out. The view was spectacular.

Another linked photo from Google Earth - this one looking back across the valley. The three of us treked nearly to the top of that mountain (Sunset Peak - elevation: 10,650 feet).

We headed back to town for dinner before trying likely moose area #2. We drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon back into the Wasatch Mountains. We drove all the way to the end of the road in Brighton and parked alongside Silver Lake. This was where Fran and Christopher had seen their pair of moose. At the entrance to the boardwalk that circled the lake, there was a sign warning of moose and advising how to handle an encounter. This was to be as close to seeing a moose as we would get. The 4/5 of a mile boardwalk was lovely, but there were quite a few people enjoying the cool evening air and no moose to be seen. There were a couple of hawks, lots of ducks and a beaver dam along with some moose tracks and poop, but none of the enormous horned mammals. I may drive up there again early on Thursday to try and spot a moose of my own, but until then let's marvel at Fran's shots - please keep in mind that I know the human who took these photos, they aren't picture postcards:

Wow.

My day off with Mom and Dad was great. We were all suitably exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel last night. We had hiked nearly 6 miles and gone up and down 1,800 feet under people power. I slept quite soundly.

This afternoon I went to visit Temple Square. A couple of nice "Sister Missionaries" (one from Spain and one from Mongolia) gave me tour of Mormon HQ. They took me into the Tabernacle where the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs and from whence the weekly "Words and Music" program originates. They also showed me the outside of the Salt Lake Temple and took me into the Visitors Center for an intro to Mormonism and some witnessing. First, the current prophet spoke (in a video) about the importance of family to the Mormon Church, and then the missionaries told me why they thought the church was so great.

The Salt Lake Temple (photo from Wikipedia).

The temple was built with granite from Little Cottonwood Canyon.

The temple site was dedicated in 1853 and the temple was completed forty years later.

Since we arrived in Salt Lake, I've been reading quite a bit about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: their beliefs, texts, leaders and history. I had no idea that Mormonism is a relatively new religion - Joseph Smith published the first version of the Book of Mormon in 1830. I also had no idea that the Latter Day Saints movement had such a violent history; both in terms of violence against them (they were forcibly driven out of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois) and violence they perpetrated against others (The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 left 120 settlers dead). I also had little idea what, exactly, the LDS movement believed and how their beliefs differ from the Methodist Church I grew up in. I can see the appeal of the church's beliefs - especially its focus on familly and how you are bound to those you love throughout eternity. But to my eyes, some of their core beliefs appear pretty wacky (you can baptize your dead relatives to ensure that they will be with you in heaven?). I remain, however, convinced that people should believe whatever it is that gives them comfort, so long as they're not hurting anyone.

After my brief tour, I walked over to the Jospeh Smith Memorial Building to see the film "Joseph Smith The Prophet of the Restoration." The film was an hour long retelling of Joseph Smith's life story. The film was meant to inspire the faithful and to generate interest in the outsider. It did neither for me. In many ways, the movie made me angry. I understand that the film was a recruitment tool - a piece of propaganda - but it struck me a pretty unbalanced. Joseph's visions and visitations were described and re-enacted, but some of the wackier details of the faith were glossed over. For example: the golden plates that the Angel Moroni gave to Joseph were hardly mentioned. The process by which Smith translated the ancient Egyptian characters was entirely absent from the film (by his own account, Smith used a stone placed inside his hat to translate the text, while the text itself was in another room). Also absent was any mention of polygamy in the early church. Most upsetting to my eyes, was the depiction of those opposed to the church. Those who fought the prophet were always depicted as dirty, snaggle-toothed, swearing drunkards, while the Mormons were always clean and well behaved. In any event, the movie didn't make me want to convert, it made me want to get out of there.

I'm sure that if you're one of the faithful, Temple Square is a very inspiring place. It is pretty in a way that the rest of Salt Lake City is not. It's got some pretty architecture (much of it straining heaven-ward) and lots of beautiful gardens, fountains and statues. But all of the suit-wearing men and ankle-length skirt wearing women with smiles and name tags just started to creep me out.

Tomorrow, I'm headed up north of the Great Salt Lake to continue my railroad history tour at the Golden Spike National Historic Site. Live steam engines - hooray!

JV