Fruita Revisited

Posted on November 6, 2003 in Vacations Writing Exercises

Note: I wrote this as part of an exercise in last evening’s Cafe Writers on a beautiful place. I don’t know if it was the fact that I’ve been going through Capitol Reef photos or that it was still in my mind because of our recent visit (see the preceding photos). In that circle, it was easy to come out with this. We write for the sake of writing there, not celebrity as happens in some other places.

Apple trees and redrock cliffs. Lawns next to a turquoise river. Fields where cows graze and mule deer come out of the desert canyons to eat the grass and nibble the gnarly fruits that have fallen from the trees. At the edges, on the rocks facing the confluence of the Fremont River and Sulphur Creek, you’ll find lemon dancing figures, deer, rams, wavy lines, and spirals pecked through the sandstone’s orange patina by a people whose name for themselves we do not know.

Fruita is what the Mormons named this ripple in the Waterpocket Fold. They wrote that life was hard at first: they had to clear space for the orchards; build cabins for shade and shelter from the steel cold snowless winters; and put up fences to hold their cows and horses. A plaque tells of an infant stung to death by a scorpion.

What is remarkable is how little they did to prosper and how much of the natural wonder of the rocks and the river remains. The orchards breed foreign fruit (two orchardists keep them healthy), but the windbreaks are native ash, cottonwood, and big-toothed maple. Green against red — not garish Christmas colors but the hues of the apples and the leaves of the trees.

Go in October when the winds riffle gently through the canyon and burgeoning white clouds creep across the azure sky. If you leave the valley, take water. It is worth leaving the pleasant green of the rift because there are natural bridges; labyrinthine canyons; a snow-like but entirely dry slickrock layer atop the red rock that walls off the valley; and a plump, painted butte called Fern’s Nipple named for a pale-skinned girlfriend of Butch Cassidy’s gang.