Sketches of Overlooked America V.10
Balaam, UT
Balaam lies nestled in a bowl between the Colorado and San Juan Rivers. The desert stretches up and out, the edges of a dish or Saturn’s rings, sandstone mesas and pinnacles left standing on the horizon for eons. It is an ancient place, onetime beachfront property on the shores of Lake Bonneville.
Mordecai Young stands in front of his home. Its a massive structure comprised of several metal shipping containers; a brash design, almost at home amongst the squared-off monuments of earth. Across a dusty courtyard sits one of eight smaller homes, also constructed of shipping containers. This is the home of Esther, Mr. Young’s 2nd wife. Adjacent are the homes of Mary (his first wife), Sariah, Meagan and Mary (His fifth wife). The women range in age from 27 to 52. Mr. Young is father to twenty-four children who live interspersed throughout the family compound, passing from his home to the homes of their respective mothers.
Mr. Young is a tall man, his features somewhat gaunt, the result of his adherence to a low-calorie diet. He has made a practice of consuming no more than 600 calories per day for the last eight years. He hopes this will lengthen his lifespan.
Mr. Young’s grandfather owned an auto dealership in Cedar City, which was passed to Mr. Young’s father, who expanded into three dealerships, which Mr. Young has expanded further into concerns in St. George, Manti and Toquerville.
Above the desk in the study of his home is a wall calendar. He checks it against that of his Apple watch and asks the disembodied assistant which of his wives will be in his home that evening.
Margaret Widdington lives on the southern edge of Balaam. Unmarried at twenty-two, Margaret is an anomaly in the community. She has declined eight proposals, and is viewed with some skepticism by the residents of Balaam. Four of her sisters have left Balaam, as have two of her brothers, all of whom are skeptical of the religious order into which they were born. Ms. Widdington has had several opportunities to depart, and has yet to take them, remaining, instead, as an outsider amongst her own people.
Ms. Widdington sits at a loom, halfway through a Navajo inspired tapestry. It’s noonday in February, and vestiges of a light snowfall still crouch in the shaded nooks of the sandstone landscape. A wind bites its way through the Martian landscape. In the sunroom Ms. Widdington sits back and surveys her work. She pushes up the sleeves of her dress and returns to the skeins of colored yarn, working them in and around each other, teasing out a pattern. She pauses to work out the tension in her hands, and drinks from a can of flat Diet Coke.
In the corner of her bedroom are completed rugs and wall art awaiting purchase. In addition to a successful Etsy shop, Ms. Widdington operates a clandestine Instagram account based around polygamist cosplay. She has 32,054 followers.
Four miles outside the town limits is the Balaam OHV park, an expanse encompassing 2004 acres of desert. Jake Smithers is in the parking lot, unloading his 250 cc Yamaha from the bed of his truck. Mr. Smithers moved to Balaam in 2016, part of an increasing influx of outsiders that began with the establishment of a speculative uranium mine on BLM land south of town. Mr. Smithers moved from southern Ontario when the federal government granted his father’s firm probationary approval to survey for the mine.
At twenty-one years old, Mr. Smithers was nonplussed at the prospect of moving to a town which had been founded and populated primarily by polygamists, but has come to find solace in the desert. Three times per week he drives to the OHV park and rides amongst the sandstone spires, the cry of his two-stroke engine echoing from the walls of earth.
Sarah Johns pushes a shopping cart down the aisle of the Balaam Grocery Co-op kicking the hems of her prairie dress out in front of her as she goes. In the cart are twin brothers, Rueben and Simeon. The blonde two-year-olds are identical, and each hold a packet of open fruit snacks in their laps. Rueben has his mother’s iPhone in hand, both boys’ attention rapt on an episode of Paw Patrol.
Ms. Johns loads four eight-pound pork shoulders into the cart next to her boys, who lean against the rounds of meat like chilled pillows, the plastic wrap gleaming in the flood of the overhead fluorescence. In the parking lot Martha Johns waits at the wheel of her Ford Econoline along with her sons, Jared, James and Josiah, and her daughter Jerusha. All are dressed in the same shade of blue, shirts and dresses cut from the same bolt of cloth. As Sarah emerges from the co-op, Martha directs Josiah to open the back doors. The young boy transfers the pork into the back of the van while the two Ms. Johns load the twins into their car seats, joking about the need for a bulk car seat retailer.
Suzanne McGinnis lives in Spanish Fork, UT, several hours northwest of Balaam. She spends several days per month in Balaam, operating a humanitarian organization concerned with raising the levels of education amongst the women of polygamist communities. Ms. McGinnis was born in Colorado City, AZ, and fled in 1993. Concerned with the literal patriarchal entrenchment in all aspects civic and religious, she works to broaden the horizons of the women of Balaam through literacy initiatives. A diminutive woman of 51, Ms. McGinnis has had an oversized influence on those who have left Balaam and similar communities to assist her efforts, often under external protest and overt threat.
Despite two decades of work, her efforts have only recently begun to bear real fruit on the heels of the federal indictment of the religious head of the FLDS order for welfare fraud. Ms. McGinnis is hopeful that what she believes is an accessible means of alternative enlightenment will be available to all who desire it.
The winter sun hangs just above the Sugarwell Mesa, west of town. The waters of the Colorado run somewhere beyond that, through the Grand Canyon and out into the flats of Mexico. The rooftops and roadways of Balaam glint white as the surrounding landscape radiates tones of red. Ms. McGinnis drives northwest towards St. George and I-15. In the passenger seat is Margaret Widdington. A stack of tapestries are folded in the trunk alongside several skeins of yarn. Ms. McGinnis says she knows of a market in Provo where Ms. Widdington might find buyers for her work. Between the anticipation of economic success and the new clothing Ms. McGinnis has provided, Ms. Widdington weighs the thought that she may have set foot in Balaam for the last time.
