Posted: January 31, 2010     Author: Peg McEntee

McEntee: A celebration in the shadow of the Deep Creeks

McENTEE: A CELEBRATION IN THE SHADOW OF THE DEEP CREEKS

On Friday, Cecil Garland advised me that he'd turned flip-flops, handsprings and cartwheels upon hearing the Nevada Supreme Court had slammed the door on plans to pump water out of Snake Valley to feed Las Vegas.

Figuratively speaking, of course. Garland's 84. But he's a tough old cowman, and he's been fighting for the valley for years.

And with good reason: It's a jewel of a place in Utah's west desert, lightly dotted with ranches, cattle and alfalfa fields. On a summer day, the air is like clean cotton on your skin. You can breathe there.

It was a 19-year-old oversight by Nevada's state engineer that convinced the court to put a hold on the Southern Nevada Water Authority's ambition to pump water out of the aquifers beneath three valleys there and the Snake Valley and send it south.

Lucky us, here on the Wasatch Front. Scientists and environmentalists have warned that if the Snake Valley were bled dry, the fields would turn to dust that the wind would carry to the Wasatch Range, adding to the nasty pollution here.

More broadly, the people of Utah were against it -- in a recent statewide Tribune poll, 63 percent of those asked opposed the pumping.

To Garland, a wry man who came to Callao in 1973, the court's decision was "supremely wise, maybe even heavenly inspired. "The Southern Nevada Water Authority is finally having to realize that their power and awesomeness is not completely dominant," he said.

"There's some things you can't buy, and that's a person's future, his life and his water."

To me, the fact that just a few ranching families live in the valley just to the east of the Deep Creek Range is proof that what is lovely and productive can still exist. It's a four-hour drive from Salt Lake City, two of which take you on dirt roads that wind through the swales and hills touched only by wind and weather.

Susan Claridge has long lived on her Six Mile Ranch, situated on the Pony Express trail and shaded by tall cottonwoods and poplars. She's surrounded by century-old orchards of apple and cherry and pear and apricot trees. Unlike her neighbors, she has springs, and has worried about the pumping plan stealing her water.

"I'm sure there are a lot of happy ranchers in the valley," she said, "and they have reason to celebrate."

Garland tells me it's calving time, and the little Red Angus calves that's he's carefully bred are playing in the fields. A few will die, but it's all in the cycle of life that ranches like his preserve for the rest of us.

Come summer, I'll go back to the valley and sit on Garland's porch and have lunch with him. I'll keep an eye out for the pronghorns that leap through his fields, and hawks that hunt above. If I'm lucky, I'll stay until sundown, when shadow and light play on the mountainsides.

It's a beautiful place. And now, figuratively speaking, the valley a chance to breathe too.

By Peg McEntee
Tribune Columnist