Category: People

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Outdoor Public Art Retells Utah’s Golden Spike Story

Golden Spike Visiting Logan, Douwe Blumberg, Artist Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Golden Spike Visiting Logan,
Douwe Blumberg, Artist
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Locomotive Advancing within Buffalo Eye Douwe Blumberg, Artist Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Locomotive Advancing In Buffalo Eye
Douwe Blumberg, Artist
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

“Distant Thunder,”
Michael Coleman, Artist
at Golden Spike National Monument
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Monument to their Memory, Ilan Averbuch, Artist, Golden Spike State Park at Reeder Ranch, Brigham City, UT, Photo Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Monument to their Memory
Ilan Averbuch, Artist
Golden Spike State Park at Reeder Ranch, Brigham City, UT
Photo Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Early this spring, a semi-truck with a long flat bed pulled into the USU parking lot next to the cemetery and parked. Lashed down firmly on the flat bed was a giant railroad spike, covered in gold leaf and very impressive to see from a distance. But walking up to it, I could see it was covered in sculptured forms. There was an Indian astride a horse; the shaggy head of a buffalo. But what really caught my attention was the close up of the buffalo eye staring right at me. Reflected in the pupil was a steam engine, coming down the tracks, right at me. I felt the chill of the inevitable crash.

The train brought hunters with guns, hide hunters who killed and took only the hides, shipping them by the bale to industries back east. When there were no more buffalo to be shot, they collected the bones and shipped them to St Louis to be crushed into fertilizer. You could see the crash coming, and knew it would be devastating – to the buffalo and the Indians whose livelihood depended on them.

Walking around to the other side of the spike, I found a very different story. Here were the laborers who had laid down the Transcontinental tracks – the Chinese, the Irish, the Civil War veterans, the Mormon graders- Each standing proudly on the other’s shoulders, all the way to the top. I breathed in the nobility of these men for a difficult job well done.

This giant golden spike’s final home will be standing upright in a 23 acre public park in Brigham City, close enough to the Forest Street exit to be visible from I-15. Until then, we are going to have to wait to see the final two sides of the spike.

But in the meantime, there is another new art piece to go see outside the Golden Spike National Park at Promontory Point.

As I pulled into this parking lot, I was astonished to see a massive chunk of railroad track, rising up from the ground and curving slightly to a vanishing point in the sky.

I was reminded of a conversation I’d has few years ago, when I was collecting train stories, with a man who had once had a summer job hammering spikes on a railroad crew. He was fifteen- half the age and half the size of the other men. But he caught the rhythm.

Tap the spike into place. Swing in the spike maul. One, two, three. Pick up the next spike.

This story helped me understand the restless energy I felt looking at the track sculpture – one more tie, one more rail, one more spike. Repeat. These tracks were going where no tracks had gone before.

Outdoor public art can be storytelling at its very best.

And now a footnote for the engineers listening in: The giant golden spike is actually 43.2319 feet tall. That’s because 43.2319 is the square root of 1869.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio upr.org & Cook Laboratories https://folklife.si.edu/archives-and-resources/cook-labs-records
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Swanson, Kirsten, Heers, Mary, Ride the rails: A storytelling exploration of Utah’s early railroad, Utah Public Radio, May 18, 2022 at 9:12 AM MDT, https://www.upr.org/arts-and-culture/2019-05-10/ride-the-rails-a-storytelling-exploration-of-utahs-early-railroad

Golden Spike Monument by Douwe Blumberg, Golden Spike State Monument, The Golden Spike Foundation (GSF), https://spike150.org/park/

Driving of the Spike Tour, News, Douwe Studios, October 24, 2023, https://www.douwestudios.com/news

Hislop, Craig, Golden Spike monument coming to USU Tuesday, Cache Valley Daily, Apr 26, 2024, https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/golden-spike-monument-coming-to-usu-tuesday/article_ee1eb334-0376-11ef-b19c-c725f46266d9.html

Williams, Carter, Utah gets $1.5M donation as it unveils more plans for new golden spike monument, KSL.com, April 11, 2024 at 7:47 p.m. https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/golden-spike-monument-coming-to-usu-tuesday/article_ee1eb334-0376-11ef-b19c-c725f46266d9.html

Don’t Confuse these two places. The Golden Spike National State Park is 30 miles West of the “Gateway” Golden Spike State Monument at Reeder Ranch in Brigham City
Golden Spike National Historic Park, US National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/gosp/index.htm

S.C.R. 6 Concurrent Resolution Creating the Golden Spike State Monument, Utah State Legislature, Signed March 13, 2024, https://le.utah.gov/~2024/bills/static/SCR006.html

“Distant Thunder” Sculpture at Golden Spike National Historical Park Honors Bison’s Past, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/golden-spike-national-historical-park-distant-thunder.htm

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A Sense of Where You Are

A Sense of Where You Are Courtesy Eric Newell with photo Copyright Michael L (Mick) Nicholls

A Sense of Where You Are Courtesy Eric Newell with photo Copyright Michael L (Mick) Nicholls

Eric Newell, author, Wild About Utah, Director of Experiential Learning and Technology, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, USU

Eric Newell, PhD
author, Wild About Utah
Director of Experiential Learning and Technology, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, USU

I arrived in Logan, Utah for winter quarter in 1994—after history professor Ross Peterson recruited my three sisters and I to Utah State University, despite the fact that our dad was a University of Utah professor and Dean. I was the final piece of Ross’ coup and he flashed a satiating grin when I first visited him on campus.

Before entering Ross’s office, I stopped to stare at a promotional poster for the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, featuring—I later learned—Mike DeBloois, wearing a brim hat, silhouetted against the Grand Teton in Wyoming. The photograph was taken by USU history professor, Mick Nicholls. The caption read, “A sense of where you are.”

This is how I first became acquainted with the concept of “sense of place” and the idea that the wild places I valued, the wild places that were part of who I was, and who I am today, had value on a larger scale.

As a College of Natural Resources (CNR) student, I enrolled in Watershed Science with Jack Schmidt and Wilderness in American with Mark Brunson. Later I took Snow Dynamics with Mike Jenkins and Environmental Education with Barbara Middleton. I was delighted that I could take college courses on rivers, on Wilderness, on the science of avalanches, and on outdoor education. Though I later changed majors, those CNR courses provided connections to places and to knowledge I’ve drawn upon throughout my teaching career.

The next year, I enrolled in English professor Tom Lyon’s course, American Nature Writers.

Tom was a lean man with a long easy stride you could pick out from across the quad on campus. I still have the books we read for his class: American Women Afield, A Sand County Almanac, Refuge, My First Summer in the Sierra, and others. Tom took us to Logan Canyon to witness the endemic McGuire primrose in bloom. We talked in class about the books we read, then we ventured out to the west desert to backpack and write.

“Walden was written with a pen,” Tom emphasized before reading a passage aloud to us:

“O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig.”

Tom’s emphasis on “the twig” inspired fellow classmate, Tim Wagner, to make T-shirts inscribed with the phrase.

Tom was a key figure in establishing the Department of English’s literary journal The Petroglyph which showcased nature writing from 1989 until 2001. In the 1990’s Tom’s efforts were crucial in preventing much of Highway 89 in Logan Canyon from becoming four-lanes. Tom’s sense of place was contagious. Several colleagues in that course pursued writing careers.

I transferred to elementary education my second year at USU because I believed the most important life work I could undertake was to connect the next generation of humans to wild places. I didn’t want to grow old in a world with people who had no understanding of, or connection to, the land that sustains us. I didn’t want to grow old in a world without advocates for conservation.

Here is what I know—getting outside to interact with the natural world matters. Spending time outdoors boosts our physical, mental, and spiritual health. We form connections with those we share our wild journeys with and we develop “a sense of where we are.”

I am Eric Newell and I am Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Images: A Sense of Where You Are Courtesy Eric Newell with photo Copyright Michael L (Mick) Nicholls
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver Also includes audio Courtesy & © Anderson, Howe, & Wakeman
Text: Eric Newell, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, Bridgerland Audubon

Additional Reading

WildAboutUtah pieces by Eric Newell, https://wildaboututah.org/author/eric-newell/

Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Utah State University, https://www.usu.edu/mountainwest/

Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University, https://cehs.usu.edu/edithbowen/

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Solar Eclipse Behaviors

Solar Eclipse-The Diamond Ring, Courtesy Pixabay, Buddy Nath, Contributor

Solar Eclipse-The Diamond Ring
Courtesy Pixabay
Buddy Nath, Contributor

I believe we’re all aware that the amount of light has major influence on wildlife activity, as it does our own, triggering everything from breeding and feeding activity and various behaviors in general. Thus the very short period of light variation during a solar eclipse has piqued my interest.

When a total eclipse crossed over New England in 1932, researchers put out a call for people to share their wildlife observations probably the first study to intentionally track animals during an eclipse—people reported owls hooting, pigeons returning to roost, and a general pattern of bird behavior that suggested “fear, bewilderment, Purple Martins pausing their foraging and nighthawks flying in the afternoon. Whooping cranes dance shortly after the eclipse, and flamingos congregate. For many birds, it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

A citizen scientist watched a yellow okra flower close during totality, just as it would at night—a favorite observation of Alison Young, co-director of the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences and lead author of a paper describing the findings. The flower’s response was unexpected, she says in an email, since totality wasn’t very long.

During the 2017 eclipse, more than 600 observers submitted their findings to iNaturalist” a community science effort where observations described an absence of wildlife during the eclipse’s peak: busy bird feeders clearing out, insects going quiet, flowers closing up. Other community scientists noted bees quieting their buzzing in flower patches, zoo animals going through their nighttime routines, and Chimney Swifts swooping and twittering like it was dusk

The Eclipse Soundscapes project is also looking for observers to record and share “field notes” of the changes they see, hear, and feel during the eclipse, whether they’re in the total path or not. By going beyond the visuals, the Soundscapes team hopes to make the big day more accessible for blind or low-vision people who are often left out of astronomy, and to help everyone have a deeper experience of the rare event. “What we’re trying to do is have people be very mindful during the eclipse, and actually use all of their senses to determine what changes. Their resulting study found that as the moon started to cover up the sun, there was a drop in biological activity in the air—suggesting that day-flying birds and insects were coming down to rest.

Countrywide, people noticed swallows and swifts flocking as darkness fell. Frogs and crickets, common elements of an evening soundscape, started to call, while diurnal cicadas stopped making noise. Ants appeared to slow down or stop moving, and even domestic chickens responded—hens gathered together and got quiet, while roosters crowed.

Even in the partial zone, you can still pay attention to how nature responds—and contribute to science. Sending in your observations through a platform like iNaturalist or eBird can help provide valuable data for future research,

Jack Greene for Bridgerland Audubon, and I’m wild about Utah!

Credits:

Images: Eclipse Pixabay, AlpineDon, Contributor, https://pixabay.com/photos/snow-canyon-state-park-utah-1066145/
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Anderson, Howe and Wakeman,
Courtesy & Copyright © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver
Also includes audio Courtesy & © J. Chase & K.W. Baldwin
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham and Jack Greene, Author, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

iNaturalist
Ohio Wildlife Observations: Solar Eclipse 2024 https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ohio-wildlife-observations-solar-eclipse-2024

eBird

The Eclipse Soundscapes project

2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA

EarthSky: How Will Animals React During the Eclipse?

Watch Videos from EarthSky Countdown to Eclipse 2024: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcwd1eS7Gpr6QrjJU7aH5K7qBCIb39ECP
Day

Whitt, Kelly Kizer, When is the next total solar eclipse? April 9, 2024, https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/when-is-the-next-total-solar-eclipse-dates-location/

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Migration Maps

Migration Maps: Watercolor maps of Utah and Damitz Exhibition Catalog Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Watercolor maps of Utah and Damitz Exhibition Catalog
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Lisa demonstrating sunprint map making techniques Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer Lisa demonstrating sunprint map making techniques
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer

Lisa exposing sunprints with UV light Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer Lisa exposing sunprints with UV light
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer

Processed sunprints hanging to dry, Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer Processed sunprints hanging to dry,
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer

Author Yuyi Morales describes exploring how she and her son discovered their new home in the United States in her picture book “Dreamers.” “We are stories,” she writes, and it reminds me of a catalog of painted stories from my mother’s ancestry. My great-great-great-grandfather Ernst Otto Wilhelm Franz von Damitz emigrated from Prussia and settled in Illinois by 1848. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibited his paintings almost 50 years ago. In sharing my migration family history through his art with my friend Lisa Saunderson, we note his depiction of beautiful architecture, placement, order, and glorious castle views. Lisa unfolds the magic of visual art daily with students at Utah State University and Edith Bowen Laboratory School.

His paintings capture the essence of place, preserving his memory of home, both the home he left and his new one.

Lisa has taught me along with our students over the years to capture place in Utah’s deserts, wetlands, and mountains through artistic mapping. As we draw the Delicate Arch in oil pastels and trace with watercolor the bird migration pathways on the shape of Utah, she shares her wonder of place as one who migrated here herself.

My roots are very coastal, Canadian, both East and West, and I married a South African, we moved here from Cape Town. In the first year living in Cache Valley, I walked all over it with my little baby daughter. I pondered the landscape and the feeling of expectation I had whenever I heard a seagull. The sound triggered a visceral sense that there must be an ocean around here somewhere. The landscape held quiet, waiting to be understood. When I finally learned about Lake Bonneville, it all made sense.

Lisa, share a little about the cyanotype Utah maps you make with your artists.

In fourth grade we look at creating a map of Utah and consider animals, plants, even people. Heritage is tied to migrations, human and animal, recent and ancient. I teach that to the children so they understand the story of the place we are in. For example, our map of Utah is illustrative of landscape. The lines we use in our legend are descriptive. The state boundary is one kind of line. The indigenous territories are defined by a different line that continues beyond the state line.

The map is meant to be educational, a visual reference to help us remember all the people of the place. When we create our cyanotype prints, we use native Utah plants that have cultural significance and consider how animal and plant migrations don’t see ANY lines.

These sunprints developed by ultraviolet light help the artists imagine Lake Bonneville landscape, people living in this place, and yield evidence of the passage of time. Looking, then wondering.

Leaving and coming back to Utah, you find profound beauty and abundance. I’ve seen it over and over through a different lens as I find myself in new geography, and I see how the children identify places they recognize and have been. It is enchanting how you can watch and document layers of history at this place at this time. Consider how you might capture your experience of place through art the next time you are out in it.

I’m Lisa Saunderson and I’m Shannon Rhodes, and we are wild about Utah.

Note: Cyanotypes that Edith Bowen Laboratory School’s fourth grade students make are gifted to the Utah State Legislature and to the donors of the College of Education at Utah State University.

Credits:

Images: Watercolor with Damitz catalog, Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer, Lisa teaching the cyanotype map process, exposing the cyanotypes, and drying maps on the line, Courtesy and copyright by Dr. Eric J. Newell.
Audio: Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://upr.org/
Text: Shannon Rhodes and Lisa Saunderson, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Wild About Utah Pieces by Shannon Rhodes, https://wildaboututah.org/author/shannon-rhodes/

Bagnall, Laura. Cyanotypes: The Origins of Photography. Kew Royal Botanical Gardens. 28 February, 2023. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/cyanotype-photography

Hellstern, Ron. Journey North. Wild About Utah, March 19, 2018. https://wildaboututah.org/journey-north/

Hurren, Dick/Bingham, Lyle, A Moment to Think About Our State Bird. Wild About Utah, July 13, 2021. https://www.upr.org/environment/2021-07-13/a-moment-to-think-about-our-state-bird

Morales. Yuyi. Dreamers. Neal Porter Books/Holiday House. 2018. https://holidayhouse.com/book/dreamers/

Rankin, Jeff. Art Institute of Chicago Recognized Early Warren County Folk Artists. March 30, 2022. Daily Review Atlas. https://www.reviewatlas.com/story/news/history/2022/03/30/art-institute-chicago-recognized-early-warren-county-folk-artist/7202831001/

Strand, Holly. Last Blank Spots on the Map. Wild About Utah, Oct. 29, 2009. https://wildaboututah.org/last-blank-spots-on-the-map/