The constant highway traffic creates a sense of in-betweenness here, with the visual distraction of litter and the grit of winter road sand.
I have parked as far onto the shoulder as possible. Still, wind from passing cars pushes against the door and I have to hold it steady as I get out. Every day I see the familiar old silo as I pass by and the concrete abutments against the edge of the irrigation canal. At closer range, though, it is a very unfamiliar place because it is never a place of destination.The fragments of weathered fence posts from collapsing corrals are bent like winter grasses. A few half-buried railroad ties still act as a makeshift bridge across the concrete ditch separating the place from the main highway.
Iron foot rungs in the crumbling concrete silo lead eerily skyward. As a teenager, whenever I missed the school bus, it marked a sort of midpoint in the long walk home. Even then, the place was in a state of abandonment. Over time, the sun has sucked the color from the wooden fence rails until they have taken on a cast of silver-gray.
There, where a gate to the corral must have been, a heavy hand-forged hinge hangs helpless, rusted purple against its post. Begging to be lain on a museum shelf, its massive wrapped edge, fashioned white-hot over some blacksmith's anvil, is as graceful as a flower, as masculine as the memory of an aging farmer.
East of the corral, the spidery tripod of a hay derrick refuses to surrender its grasp on the sky. The main beam, which was probably put in place by a gang of men with teams and pulleys, hangs helplessly in midair. A good nudge could bring it crashing down. But as long as it retains its fragile upward gesture, an awkward scrap of heritage is maintained.
In recent years, the subdivisions have crept close. Curious children have scrambled over the fences, light-footing it around protruding nails. It would not surprise me if a group of parents had not already gathered to suggest that the whole mess be burned on some Saturday morning funeral pyre. If so, it would seem most appropriate to do it with an air of somber celebration for the passage of an era which will never come again, and that only the elderly remember very well.
I recall my mother mentioning this place. She called it "Boley's Bridge," and so did we, not because of the corrals that Boley's must have built but because of the bridge - where the road crossed over the stream.
"Whenever we went into town," she said, "Dad would bypass the bridge and go down through the water so the wheels on the wagon could get wet and tighten up."
Remembering her words, I have noticed in many of the old photographs of Utah main streets how wagon ruts often bypass bridges and cut down through the streams.
Back in the present, the sound of traffic disturbs my concentration. A flashy blue van with silver stripes and louvered shades thunders past. In its wake, I hear, on the other side of the bridge, the scattered clattering of wood and soul, and the image of Grandpa's wagon vanishes, strewn skyward in slow motion.
And I am left to contemplate our own fragile passing and wonder what thoughts the curious remnants of our time might someday incite in future generations - beyond the clinging awareness conjured now by the ancient derrick and corrals at Boley's Hole.