Item Detail
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30760
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1
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0
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English
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The Chimerical Desert
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BYU Studies
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Fall 1992
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32
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3
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Provo, UT
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Brigham Young University
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27-42
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"the Sheeprock Mountains curve in the shape of a knife across the south end of rush valley settled by my people and others in the 1860s Blackrock mountain is the butt of the handle the Tintic Peaks the top of the hilt main canyon the blade point inside the curve is Vernon a Mormon community with willows cottonwoods and Lombardy poplars growing along ditches a brick and adobe schoolhouse and in my youth, a white wooden church with hardwood floors and folding benches beyond the mountains and westward along the pony express trail lies deep desert known in pioneer times as Paiute hell Frank C Robertson describes this country in "Through Paiute Hell," from lookout pass you lookout over forbidding deserts of mountains and flats... it is hot as the hinges of hell in summer cold as the polar regions in winter in winter blizzards block the roads in summer cloudbursts wash them out. since the beginning of this century, the male bBeennnniioonnss have left hearth and wife to conduct an affair with that desolate country. As they followed their sheep cattle and horses into the desert spending more and more time away from churches and town gatherings they seem to have also drifted from conventional religion and culture they carried their faith into the wilderness and their doubt back to town their wandering is my heritage." [Author]