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Moab Revisited

"Hello, Moab . . . I'm Back!" A groupie falls back in love with Utah's Rock Star of Fun

By Amy Maestas

Found in: | Where to Go |

Even the dump in Moab is famous.

That's right. So much has been written about this former mining-town-turned-playground-for-adults that the Moab City Dump has been honored for its beauty. Well, it really wasn't about beautiful trash. Instead, Outside Magazine awarded it "America's Most Scenic Dump," because brilliant red rock and lofty 12,000-foot mountains rim its sprawling acres of rubbish. The natural beauty of the area can do nothing but enhance a dump. It isn't an out-of-the-way landmark. Grand County leaders haven't gone to great lengths to put what most would deem an eyesore out of sight either.

In fact, the dump is known enough that four-wheeling enthusiasts even named a spot on a trail after it. The "Dump Bump," as it's called, is a place near the Moab Dump that requires these enthusiasts to make insanely technical moves that essential requires massive vehicles to become perpendicular to rocks - slick rocks. Gravity be damned.

But this story isn't about gravity-challenging fanatics, or the Moab Dump. At least not directly. There is a relation to my point, however. When I anxiously signed up for this story, I knew how challenging it would be to find an angle. Surely, I said to myself, there is something that has yet to be written about Moab. There must be one tiny angle that no on in the free-press world has put on glossy, four-color paper. And if there was anyone to find that angle, it was going to be me. I wanted a tough assignment that wouldn't allow complacency. More so, I signed up because it offered me the opportunity to do something I'd wanted to do for the last few years: Redevelop my love for Moab.

Moab and I fell out of love about 10 years ago. I can't point to an exact episode that ended it for us. Long ago, I had learned to accept its scorching summer temperatures. In turn, it tolerated my friends and me during our mid-80s Spring Break romps. I could go on and on with such examples. But ultimately, none of them is responsible for us growing apart. We just sort of lost our attraction for each other. We grew apart. Moab became something different. When it did, I thought I was better than it was and moved on - literally to greener pastures.

GROWING UP

I grew up in Salt Lake City. Weekends jaunts to Moab were part of my high school and college years. This was pre-prefab Moab. It was only a few years after mountain biking became so loved. It was during days when you could roll into town at 11 p.m. Friday and get a room at Red Rock Lodge for $20. It was when you could ride Slickrock and see maybe six other people. It was when the entire town closed-up shop for the winter.

But keep reading. I'm not going down the path of lamenting what was once a great small-town now overrun by tourists and agro-recreationalists. I will only mention once that advertising and media exposure has run off with Moab's identity. Such lamentations don't do much in this age where the West is growing like pesky tamarisk. Besides, I don't even live in Moab, and I never have. So it would be unbecoming of a lady to whine, especially when she's only ever been a visitor.

To find my love again, I needed to see it with new eyes. I needed to dispose of Moab's old personality and give it a second chance. I went in search of that fleeting unexposed story.

In fairness, Moab has changed its personality. It is more mature than it was when we were together in the 1980s. These days, it hosts a bang-up party - more beds for the weary, tired and dehydrated attendees, a wider array of great beer, and opportunities to do any outdoor sport you want to do. As it has grown up, Moab has sort of become the belle of the ball, the head cheerleader, the most popular girl in the school, if you will.

Consequently, Moab has become the center of attention. It ranks right up there with New York, London, Paris and Tokyo. I know this because it says so on the bumper sticker.

GEIGER COUNTERS AND MONKEY WRENCHES

It took a long time for Moab to become the pinnacle of tourism success that it is today. It's easier to be enamored with the Moab of yesteryear, even though logic prompts us to realize progress is not only inevitable, but also necessary.

By the time the Mormons arrived in this small town near the end of the 19th Century, most Utah settlements were in place. Its name was born when residents built the post office in 1881. Moab is also the name of a Biblical town at the edge of Zion. Thought one of the last areas in Utah to be settled, this state's Moab lured people immediately because of the gold in the nearby La Sal Mountains. Uranium was also a draw, being extracted from nearby cliffs. The town experienced resurgence in uranium extraction in the 1950s, when Charlie Steen hit a million-dollar jackpot discovery on the edge of town.

Though uranium mining is long dead in this area, Steen's namesake and influence on Moab remains in relics throughout this desert Mecca. Many people hoped to cash in on Steen's discovery. Many did. Many did not. Consequently, those many people came and went as the market dictated. While in Moab, this radioactive element created a stellar mid-century life for many American families forever in search of a dream.

The post-uranium boom left Moab a dry place. Those who made short-term money left for greener pastures, literally. By the 1970s, Moab was a quiet town struggling to stay awake after fulfilling lofty dreams. Dreamy Moab became something more like dreary Moab.

Edward Abbey, the famous, crotchety eco-writing badass, briefly brought the town a little bit of notoriety. Where you stand on the side of environmental politics, though, indicated just how much attention you paid - or cared - to what Abbey did for Moab. Love him or hate him for it, Abbey put desert beauty into context. Through his words, he made desert soil tangible. With Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey could have single-handedly spurred a mass ascension on Moab. But fortunately (for Abbey), his writing gained popularity mostly after his death in 1989 and just maybe contributed to a new desert-loving culture.

By the 1980s, ambitious tourists replaced hard-working men with Geiger counters and four-wheel drives with bike-mileage counters and four-wheel drives. A new kind of rubber - slimmer and knobbier - hit the redrock country.

This is where I took notice. In fact, everyone took notice.

MAKING THE EFFORT

There isn't much use going into the story of how the modern-day mountain bike shook up the southern Utah desert. The story has been repeated so many times and in so many languages, that any suspense it once held has been transferred to, well, er, suspension. I know, dear reader, that was a stale transition. But this is Moab, after all. If you are a writer, aren't you usually compelled to make that fat-tire connection in any way possible?

Perhaps. Yet it supports my suspicion that Moab has been usurped by commercialism. It also helps explain how I fell out of love with this place and was desperately trying to find the love again.

But where is the love?

If you are a BASE jumper, it's found at the top - and then the bottom - of a red-rock spire in Castle Valley. If you are a cyclist, it's found on mesas with names as harsh as the effort required riding them. If you are an adrenaline junky, it's found in the tiny steel doorway of a plane 15,000 feet in the air. If you are an off-road jeeper (though not proven, I think it is Moab that made the word Jeep move from noun to verb), it's found on the "Faith in Friction" trail.

For people like Lori and Scott McFarland, or David and Kim Boger, or Jennifer Speers, love is in keeping the love alive. In other words, they are Moab locals. More than that, they are locals who love Moab - not just the idea of Moab.

The McFarlands settled in Moab nearly 10 years ago. Quick to identify that Moab still had room for tourist-based businesses, they started High Point Hummer and ATV, a company that takes you to tight places and high spaces. Before starting High Point, Lori and Scott each worked as commercial river guides. They are rare in that they stuck around Moab and became part of the permanent scene.

Many people who work for tourist-based businesses come and go with the seasons, nearly moving in and out in the same flow as tourists.

Locals are also trying harder to invest in the community to bring some permanence to it - even at some hefty expense.

The Bogers revitalized a run-down house in the middle of town. The house hardly looked salvageable when they bought it, says Kim Boger. Instead of razing it and replacing it with something more modern, the Bogers turned the late-1800s Victorian home into a viable bed and breakfast. Cali Cochitta (in Aztec it means "House of Dreams") sits just two blocks from busy Main Street yet is a mark of respect to Moab's American Indian history. Each room's namesake comes from Indian meanings.

Jennifer Speers did something even more dramatic. In fact, something unheard of. More than 30 miles up the Colorado River near Moab, Speers bought a ranch near historic Dewey Bridge. Speers is single-handedly preserving the bucolic cow pastures and open space. She also bought the adjacent subdivision, ripe for development of trophy homes and condominiums. Speers tore down the only structure there - a $600,000 adobe manor.

LOVESTRUCK

Though these are only a handful of stories illustrating Moab's struggle to define its image apart from tourism, they are meaningful. Ultimately, somebody somewhere in Moab is making an effort to mend my relationship with it. All I can ask is that it meet me halfway.

To be fair, Moab has done a fine job of limiting the kitsch that is so prevalent in tourist towns. Main Street is far more Americana than it is quaint. I can respect that. The scenery hasn't changed either. Though I never expected it to change, I will admit that I took it for granted. I sold way too short those red rocks, unchecked tamarisk and coarse sand. They never stopped loving me. Instead, they just opened the relationship to other people. Many more people.

For a loyalist like me, it is an adjustment. So when I returned last month and changed my attitude - stopped being greedy and yearning for an ideal - I stared at a new face. I realized Moab never left me - I left it.

Moab and I are on the mend. I'm falling in love with its new face. With a little redrock and whitewater therapy, we'll work things out. Even if we have to meet at the dump to talk things out.

Amy Maestas is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest magazine and a fan of fine inns and community charms. She wasn't asked to pursue charm to a dump but Inside/Outside stands behind its writers setting new standards.