Creating Beauty along the Wasatch Front

Six of us gathered in Warm Springs Park at the north end of Salt Lake City on Sunday, June 17th to participate in the Global Earth Exchange. Warm Springs is a natural hot springs whose waters come from the mountains and after diving deep, deep into the earth where they are heated up, they rise to the surface in the fault where the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains meet the flatbed of the Great Salt Lake. These hot springs were visited and used by indigenous people, and then the early Mormon settlers who eventually built a municipal pool and piped the healing waters to the local hospital. Now this small area is bordered by big roads, adjacent to a petroleum refinery. The municipal pool building sits empty and a small park is used by the homeless and dog walking neighbors. And the hot water still flows. Two citizens have taken up the cause of this place, envisioning a gathering place for the community—a healing place where everyone is welcome and differences can sit side by side. They have stirred the imagination of many, and recently were able to organize community opposition to a large housing development. On this Sunday, we gathered under a tree near the abandoned building. David and Sylvia, the citizen activists, spoke of the history and geography of the place. We then each spoke about why we were there and what Warm Springs meant to us. Then we all went on a solo walk around the small area, in our six-year-old selves, to listen to what the land and our hearts had to say. And returned to tell our stories. David, the man of brilliant brains who said he couldn’t get out of his thinking mind, took off his shoes and walked on the many different surfaces—concrete, cut grass, wild and prickly places, and the warm water—determined to feel it all. Sylvia was filled with the freedom and joy of connecting more deeply to this place she knew so well, in this particular container of a small group walking with intention. She was drawn to the grate where the hot water drains back down into the earth, feeling nourished as it cascaded down to who knows where. Brenda found an abandoned shopping cart in the weeds and thought about wounds and that she doesn’t see this place as wounded, but as a place at this time, OK with it just as it is. Amy walked up high to the road that goes about this area, to see the overall lay of the land and how everything connects. Victoria found treasures: a snail shell, a black and white rock that looked like a butterfly. Great wisdom was shared as well, about what it all means to be human in a constantly shifting, dying, re-birthing and changing cosmos. We felt each other, and our kinship — strangers who became compatriots on a Sunday morning in June.