Nature Blog - Place Entry #3

Tuesday February 9, 2010 9:45 am

I was as confused by the weather this morning as the weather seemed to be. At first, I thought the translucent gray haze that hovered over every horizon was more inversion smog. We've had a lot of inversions lately, which are when the air closer to the earth is colder than the air above, which keeps the cold air from moving and traps any pollutants as well. This creates a heavy smog that can last for days and is terrible to breathe. It happens most frequently in valleys, which is why it is such a problem for our small valley here. However, as I got closer to Provo Canyon, I saw that the haze extended upward until it faded out the tops of the mountains. Those were clouds, pulled apart like cotton but still thick enough to blend the earth and sky together. They almost looked like they had snow in them, but the sun was up, though weakly filtered through the strange clouds. I wondered if it was a combination of low clouds and inversion air to make the weather so unsure of itself.

As I started up Provo Canyon, driving the winding four miles to Bridal Veil Falls, bits of cloud start to swirl around me, single pieces of white that seemed to appear out of nowhere. They had gotten lost on their way to the blizzards in the East, and looked almost like leaves falling from trees, individuals caught on the same wind. The sun was stronger in the canyon, slanting from across the mountaintops to illuminate the north canyon wall in soft light. The snowflakes were coming from the light.

I was able to spend only a few minutes outside. I started down the trail toward the falls, but the wind was sharp, freezing, cutting, and strong. When I turned back toward the car, I was walking directly into the wind and had to fight for every step. I had come to observe, experience, engage with the natural world, but I had been turned back. Nature was too much for me today.

As I drove past the overlook for the falls, I caught sight of a small brown building, dilapidated and worn from disuse. It was all that remained of an aerial tramway that had been built in 1967 and traveled to the cliffs above the falls where a restaurant had been. The tram was the only way to get to the restaurant, and was known (though not confirmed) as the "world's steepest aerial tramway," rising at a 45 degree angle and then a 65 degree angle before reaching the top. My parents could remember watching the six-passenger tram travel up and down the canyon. I had never seen it myself, because it had been destroyed by two major avalanches, the second of which was in 1996. After the first avalanche, the tramway was rebuilt but after the second, the tram station at the bottom of the falls was abandoned. Nature had reclaimed its territory.

I looked at the broken station and the bits of history left over, and I was very aware of the towering walls of the canyon, their rocky faces, their presence and weight. I watched the powerful flow of icy water pound down the mountain, and I noticed that the wall of ice to the right of the waterfall had cracked, a huge piece starting to slide away. All around me were powerful forces: ice, water, snow, rock, and the pull of the earth. Human power was so little in comparison.

And yet, as I turned my car around and returned to the hazy valley, I wondered if the inversion would affect the air quality if we weren't producing so much pollution. Maybe our power and effect was significant after all.