US Highway 50: A 500-Mile Stretch of Utah, Nevada Aridity Marginalizes Farming to the Edges of Great Basin

Intersection of North Harmony and Stillwater
oil on canvas
11 9/16 x 10 5/8 inches
2010
The agricultural area of Fallon, Nevada is on
the western side of the Great Basin.

On the 500 mile drive across the Great Basin, there is farming in the shadow of the surrounding ranges.  The one end of the highway mirrors the other.  However, everything in between is far too dry to support anything more than grazing.  If it were not for the many mountain ranges that rise and fall away on sliding horizons, there wouldn’t even be the short lived streams that occasionally fill dusty playas.  What I wrote below is based on a memory of impressions.  Having lived some of my life in rural Utah, I know farming is more than fields of green and quiet highways.

 



I photographed the fields of Fallon, Nevada so long ago that I wasn’t sure which way I was facing.  The light seemed to signify the east, and that was confirmed by the enlarging profile of Fairmont Peak as I zoomed in on a horizon of shaded debris, the hallmark of farming.  Even in June, the days are never long enough to complete all the chores.  Tire swings and irises divide houses from dusty ruts, outbuildings and alfalfa.  Lawns function as mud reducing turf for car chasing dogs bent on the senseless joy of barking.  Deep-rooted vehicles and discarded parts are indispensable links to laboring children home from school and the many families dependent upon backyard tractor cannibalization.  Farming can be like navigating a dead cow up a canal with a sunflower stock of a stick; the flies are a reminder of bloat in the reeds.

 

The image was cropped from three horizontal frames.  Although it was a shame to leave all that information out, it is nice to work vertically.  That is something I seldom do; I really like being able to describe the lay of the land.  However, the arbitrary nature of the composition still comes down to content.  The details equal design.  There is no need to rely of on fabricated relationships or kiss up to the picture plane.  The only things that matter are the things that do, and they are not the similarity of summarized shapes, patterns of textured gestures, the rhythms of obstinate stumbling blocks, the chime of untimely riming, focal points, undeniable plots, or graveyard junipers pruned to view Saint Patrick’s Cathedral more precisely.

 

The beauty of the question is asphalt and intractable weeds injecting seasonal green into sorted stones shouldering the pullover of lost and lonely motorists.  Not all are stranded.  Some come for the quiet splendor of the countryside, the home of those clinging to the land of ancestors, even if it was just Uncle Jim and his son Rob trying their hand at ranching.  Wealth resides on a porch of screened in evenings.  Crickets rise and fall in pale twilight.  Constellations are bound to rule the night.  Dogs yap, howl and bark at elusive horizons.  Moths bombard blinding isolation; a jackrabbit is hit by rolling headlights in the glare of hesitation.  The evening conceals the fatality of grinding traction in a swell of sweet smelling alfalfa. 

US Highway 50, Hinckley, Utah
The agricultural area of Delta, Utah is on the eastern side of the Great Basin