SNOW!

 

Will we yet be able to shake it during this trip? Sometimes I wonder ...

The hillside with graduation dates visible in the morning

When I wrote from Arco two days ago, sun shining in my window, I was expecting a leisurely day of travel to Spanish Fork, about an hour south of Salt Lake City, with a stop either for a shorter hike around Salt Lake or a visit to Temple Square. What I hadn't expected was the hair-raising drive that awaited us before we reached I-15 near Blackfoot.

While having a huge breakfast – my favourite meal of the day when we are travelling – at 'Pickle's Place', in short walking distance from our motel, people came trickling in, and we caught shreds of conversation that made it quite clear that it would not be a great idea to go to Salmon that morning, with all the new snow and now wind starting up again, too. It didn't occur to us that the same might be true for the road east which we were taking to get to I-15.

It was much worse than this!

As soon as we had left Arco behind it became clear that this was not going to be a relaxing drive. In this flat country, not interrupted even by fences for cattle, let alone snow fences, the strong southerly winds had free reign. Veils of snow whipped off the peaks of already high drifts on the side of the road made it impossible to see any further than a few metres, and Dorothee, who had volunteered to take the first leg of the drive, needed all her concentration to stay the course. After a few miles flashing lights ahead alerted to a snowplow – what a welcome sight! We followed slowly, keeping enough distance to stay out of the now even denser cloud of snowy mist, yet able to be guided by the lights and not veer off the road. Even with the snowplow being only maybe a couple of hundred metres ahead the freshly plowed track was drifting in again already.

Yet through all this the sun was shining from the deep blue sky, and the strange rounded mound resembling a loaf of bread – because of its shape the most notable of the hills rising here and there from the vast plains - in the distance with its wreath of clouds, looked almost otherworldly. Vegetation in this area consists mainly of scraggly sagebrush, and every little shrub sported its own little drift. 

 Once the highway split and we took the turnoff towards I-15, thus changed direction from due east to a bit southeast, the going got a lot easier. The snowplow continued on the highway we had just left, but this highway ... had been newly plowed as well, and soon the snowy patches got smaller and we could pick up some speed. On the interstate there was no sign of what we had just traversed, and we finally could relax and made good progress. Not only that: the temperature, which had been a cool -10 for the first hour and a half of driving, started to warm up the further we travelled south. By the time we reached Salt Lake City it was +7, the warmest we've had it this far.

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I had asked Jay, our friend from previous visits at Diamond Fork hotsprings (were we were going the next day), for recommendations for a shorter hike around Salt Lake City, and he had sent a few suggestions that looked like nice options, but I had also mentioned that we were thinking of visiting Temple Square. That morning he sent a note suggesting we might want to opt for the latter since new snow in the area would probably make the trails – a little higher up in the canyons – less desirable. Johann and I had both been to the Temple area before, but for him it was 50, for me 44 years ago, and we didn't remember a whole lot; Dorothee had never been there.

Getting to the Temple Square area was surprisingly easy, traffic much, much less than we've experienced it on the freeway passing the city. We had a bit of trouble finding a parking spot at first, but after circling the 5-acre square once we left the car on the side of a road just north of the square. The sunshine was almost warm when we walked over to the entrance, and it felt as if spring was a possibility at last. We tried to get our bearings, find out where we wanted to go, and soon were approached by two young women who greeted us warmly and welcomed us. We chatted for a bit and found out that there would be a guided tour of some of the buildings in about fifteen minutes. One of the girls, when she found out that we were from Canada, asked, 'Canada! Did you notice ...?' I hadn't, but Johann had: on her badge she wor the Canadian flag: she was from New Brunswick. We talked to a couple of other girls, always in groups of two: for the time they spend here to do their missionary time – eighteen months, if I remember correctly – they are paired with another young woman for three weeks at a time. 

Missionary work, we heard later from Jay, consists to a large part of service work nowadays, working in Welfare Square, for instance, which is part of the humanitarian efforts of the Church and consists of a grain elevator, storehouse, bakery, cannery, milk processing facility, thrift store and employment centre. It would have been interesting to see this – again we found out about it later from Jay – but we heard a bit about the history of the Mormons and the buildings on the square from the two young women who conducted the tour, one from the US, the other from Brazil. 

We started at the statue of a man and a woman pulling a handcart loaded with all the possessions they brought with them on their way from Illinois from where they were exiled for their religious beliefs and travelled west in the search of a place to settle where they could practice their faith. We had always assumed that the carts and wagons were pulled by horses and oxen, but many families embarked on the long and perilous journey pulling these handcarts since they didn't have the means for anything else.

We were taken to the domed Tabernacle next, home to the world-renowned Tabernacle Choir. The acoustics in this big hall are amazing. Our guide explained that it was built for big assemblies, at a time when technology didn't provide the means of voice amplification. The preacher's voice needed to project from the front to the very back of the hall, and with room for 6000 people that was an amazing feat without microphones. Had the road conditions been better we would have had a chance to experience these great acoustics for ourselves: we had hoped to be there in time for the organ recital that afternoon, a regular Sunday afternoon feature. I would have loved to hear this huge, beautiful instrument that has a rich and interesting history.

https://www.thetabernaclechoir.org/about/organs/organ-information/tabernacle.html

The main building of the square, the Temple itself, has been undergoing major renovations since 2019, with a planned completion in 2025. All we could see was its shrouded form, and the exposed foundations: the main reason for the construction is to make it more earthquake-safe. As non-Mormons we wouldn't be allowed into the temple anyway, except for a few months right after the renovations are finished. During the construction period, our guide explained, the temple is a building like any other, and people will be invited to view and admire it when it's finished. Once it is re-dedicated that will not be possible anymore. 

The assembly hall on the other hand, a chapel that's probably the oldest structure on the square, across from the tabernacle on the southern edge of Temple Square, was open, and we were welcome to enter. It is hard to believe that it was built within four years – 1863 to 1867 – not even twenty years after the arrival of the Mormons in this area in 1847. The temple was started even earlier, in 1853. At a time when they still had to work hard to establish even the means for survival the people were working on constructing these huge buildings. The church being the centre point of their lives, this work must have been of utter importance: to have a sacred place to gather. Every single one of the huge stones had to be brought from a quarry about twenty miles away by horse or ox and wagon, and each round trip took two days. We marveled not only at the dedication to make this possible but also at the fact that among the people who came west were artisans skilled enough to build these beautiful churches.

After one last stop to absorb the signs of spring in the Temple Square park – tulips, hyacinths and iris getting ready to push up buds – we concluded our visit by stopping briefly at the relatively new convention centre with its huge auditorium that has room for 21000 people.

Stained-glass windows at the assembly hall (chapel)

 

The car thermometer still showed +7 degrees when we arrived at our hotel in Spanish Fork. Finally! Maybe we could really say good-bye to winter now.