July 11 & 18, 2022 Issue

I relish Joy Williams’s brisk, quirky, humorous, concrete writing style. There’s an excellent example of it in this week’s issue. Called “Mine Field,” it’s an account of a road trip she took through a breathtaking western landscape scarred by mines. Here’s her description of the route:

Lately, I’ve been taking another route (only about nine hundred and fifty miles), up 77 through Globe and the twisty, magnificent Salt River Canyon and the White Mountain Apache lands to funky Holbrook, a city that still primarily sells rocks, then on through Navajo and Hopi lands into Utah and strutty Moab (which has truly jumped the shark) toward Colorado Springs and the shrinking Colorado River, through the lovely Yampa Valley, past sprawling Steamboat and through the forbidding Rabbit Ears Pass and into Wyoming, the Meadowlark State.

Globe, Salt River Canyon, White Mountain Apache, Navajo, Hopi, Utah, Moab, Colorado Springs, Yampa Valley, Steamboat, Rabbit Ears Pass, Wyoming, Meadowlark State – there’s poetry in those names! The entire piece is like that. Despite its bleak message (“But we are also realizing our powerlessness to preserve or protect anything—children, the Earth, our instinct to harbor and honor the holy”), I enjoyed it immensely. The last paragraph made me smile:

If you’re weary (and who can blame you, with all that’s going on) and just want a suggestion for where to stay on this particular route, try the dear and simple Recapture Lodge, in Bluff, Utah. If you make it to Laramie, Wyoming, the vegetarian restaurant Sweet Melissa and its attendant bar, Front Street Tavern, should not be missed.