I had the best day yesterday. I flew solo over to the Spiral Jetty by Promontory. I didn’t think the dirt road would be anything near drivable, and my courage level diminishes significantly when I don’t have another Jeep with me. However, I had nearly a whole day to kill, and nothing to do. And to my delight, the dirt road past Golden Spike was mostly dry. I even kicked up a little dust on my way out there.

I absolutely love the last half mile of road to the Jetty. It curves around that dark hillside, constructed of knobby, black rocks that contrast sharply, almost perfectly, with the nearly pure white salt of the lake below. The road gets rough, full of pot holes and there’s usually a car out there trying, oh, so hard, to not bottom out on every rock in the road.

Today, I passed one truck near end of the road.

And the Jetty was mine.

It just doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been out there; it’s always a surreal experience. It’s spiritual and amazing. The Jetty is good for the soul. It’s cleansing, and scouring, and refreshing.

The Jetty is black again, just like it was when Robert Smithson created it in 1970. And the water is so far out from the shore, with a solid, salt-paved beach surrounding the Jetty. The Jetty is meant to be walked. Smithson created it in a counter-clockwise spiral to represent going back in time to the person walking it. It’s a chance to go back and fix your mistakes. And once you’re at the very center, you experience re-birth, walking out from the middle, clock-wise this time, back into the world. It’s strange, being out in the very center of the Jetty, with two rings of earth circling you, and miles and miles of flat nothingness that blends in perfectly with the sky. If you look to the south, you can see Antelope Island, floating on the horizon, or maybe slightly above it, you can’t really tell; it’s like nothing on this planet.

Today, when I walked the Jetty, I headed out along the black straight-away, focusing on where my feet were landing, watching my step, trying not to trip, even though the salt and sand are solid to either side. No. The Jetty is meant to be walked. But when I got to that first curve, the start of the rings, I stopped. That surreal whiteness was surrounding me and it seemed like those uneven rocks under my feet were the only thing holding me to earth. I couldn’t help it. I stepped off the Jetty and headed out into the lake.

I had horrible visions of the salt pavement under my feet opening up and swallowing me whole, much like a frozen lake, but I kept walking. I knew under the salt, which probably took years to form and solidify, the water wasn’t very deep. I had to walk at least fifty yards from the edge of the Jetty to reach water. And then it was only a few inches deep. Another thing I couldn’t help: I just HAD to touch the water (Thanks, Mom, for teaching me to touch EVERYTHING, to have some psychological need to feel the water). Even though the air was crisp and a slight breeze was blowing, the water was warm, warmer than the air. The makeshift salt shore had a rusty tint to it, a remnant the lake’s red algae.

When I returned home from the Jetty, I looked it up in my art history books. The entire theme of the Jetty, as a work of art, is life. Smithson was from New Jersey, but he chose the Great Salt Lake for his masterpiece for one reason: life. He was amazed that in this salty, uninhabitable body of water, life is abundant. Smithson was mesmerized by the red algae in the Great Salt Lake. He loved how it suggested the presence of blood, another indicator of life. Smithson chose to create a spiral because of it’s representation of life in DNA, molecules, galaxies, seashells, and so on.

It’s got everything a total nerd like me needs….a great baja road for the Jeep nerd in me, the amazing work of art and all the fluff that goes with it for the art history nerd, lack of crowds for the part of me that hates people, AND the three hours of pumping good music straight into my system. Like a junkie with an IV.

What a great day.