My wife weighs in on the mysterious reflective object that appeared and a week later disappeared in the southern Utah desert. She says if this tower is technically neither an obelisk nor a monolith, why not call it a monolisk, or an obelith?
Monoöbelisk.
Two days after its discovery by a helicopter pilot hauling wildlife biologists, a friend sent coordinates and told me to zoom in close. I did and saw a peculiarly straight shadow in the back of a shallow bedrock canyon. Apparently it had been there for years and no one noticed. He’d found the site. We came up with a plan, a couple days out camping on red slickrock, exploring this metal pillar and its surrounding terrain at our leisure. The place is a labyrinth of sandstone possibilities, the same as about a hundred miles in all directions. Why there? Who cares?
The next morning it got out on YouTube. The Colbert Report already had it in the files, ready for a monologue. Helicopters were arriving. On Facebook, a friend posted a picture of his teenage daughter, an avid rock climber, sitting atop of this unpermitted, Banksy-esque installation.
We dropped our plans. Sour grapes. Crowds aren’t our thing.
My guess is that a lot of people who found this art installation an affront already have the privilege of their own secret spots in the desert. Illegally erecting a 12-foot tall, three-sided metal object on isolated public lands is an incursion into their, and my, Thoreauvian solitude.
In the real world, a friend who went with her family, whose daughter climbed to the top, said it was “quite wonderful, a super-fun day out in the desert, meeting all walks of life.” She noted a convoy of jeeps tricked out with extra gear, as if prepared for weeks in the outback, and “then along comes the hippy dude in his mom’s 1999 Kia sedan.”
Was the desert damaged? It was. People, cars, an airplane landing in the sage. Less than an oil pad, I’d say. This will blow over and many of the tracks will be gone by spring. A triangle is left cut into the bedrock. I’ve seen worse. My friend commented, “The mystery of it all, and how many people were intrigued by it. It was what a lot of people needed last week.”
I’m behind the curve, a luddite looking for something older. I went to a different desert tower, a masonry structure built 800 years ago, standing a few stories tall on the back of a fallen piece of cliff. This is near the Four Corners, about 70 miles away from the monoöbelisk. The lonely archaeological site is out a rough dirt road where I’ve never seen another soul, and a short walk up washes and through the geologic rubble of a mesa-side. Pueblo ancestors had erected this monolith, or many-lith, out of thousands of cut stones, its vertical lines and corners ruler-straight, though it stands on the lopsided surface of a massive boulder. No question, it is a work of art. This edifice may have had all sorts of functions in its day — guard station for a local spring, watchtower in a time of war, beacon for a local, prehistoric community — yet it was designed with a discerning aesthetic. It was a sign of its times.
Sign of our times is a metal pillar planted anonymously in the middle of nowhere. Its surface reflects ourselves, no metaphor needed. While I was dawdling with this ancient tower, four local ne’er-do-wells came at night to the metal monolith, pushed it over, and carried its pieces out in a wheelbarrow, saying, “This is why you don’t leave trash in the desert.”
Good for them. It needed doing. Myself, I would have left the exhibition up longer, letting it tell us more about ourselves and our landscape. I would have given it long enough to have it’s own voice. Since it’s here, let’s see what this is about. That didn’t happen because we’re scared monkeys. In our own Stanley Kubrick movie, we would have thrown rocks and bones at the looming alien monument, and, learning the advantage of a lever, toppled the thing, then probably wielded its broken shards and attacked each other. We can be that way.
Another similar metal sculpture appeared shortly afterward in Romania, and has since disappeared, and a third on a hilltop in southern California, where it also was quickly uprooted from its rebar base and taken away, stolen, if you will.
I prefer my spot in the sharp, early winter wind, boulders and cliff faces bright at sunset. The wind threads through gaps in the tower’s mortar, slowly pushing the artifact over, the patience of centuries.
This is a monolith I can believe in.
Or is it an obelisk?
Photo: Craig Childs
I think it’s interesting how we can worship human remnants that are hundreds or thousands of years old, never considering the pot shards carpeting the landscape as litter. Yet, as we litter our world with plastic, we are ashamed of the story our detritus tells about us. We are so self-loathing that we despise the voice of our remnants. Thus, a monolith/obelisk pops up here and there, like a child’s game, to tease our interest in such trivia, as we struggle to make sense of it.
“Sign of our times is a metal pillar planted anonymously in the middle of nowhere. Its surface reflects ourselves, no metaphor needed.”
That sentence perfectly describes this social media driven, attention seeking culture we’ve all erroneously created for ourselves.
I post on social media under a fake name because I’m not posting for attention, the things I share I hope are educational and that my sheep, I mean, followers, actually LEARN something while oggling at a pretty picture (who’s location, like you, I would never disclose on the internet).
Good luck humanity…good luck.
Art. As it is. Doing what art does.
Did your real world friend and her family take a groover on their visit, or did they shit in the bushes like so many others attracted to this bargain-basement mystery?
I dunno, perhaps whomever planted the monolith intention was to get people out to the desert. I am sure that is what the guy with the treasure box intended with the decade long search. This year it is needed, diversion. Does the cyptobiotic soil recover
“This year it is needed, diversion.” Human diversion has got us in the ecological wasteland we have created. So so sad, such a sacrifice: all the people having to isolate in their cozy homes, worrying about how to make beans interesting, ordering a dozen pajamas from Amazon. (As reported in the NY Times.) Yes, folks, I pretty much loathe my own species – particularly we entitled ones. Go read some of my early work – open your heart – and do something.
For an interesting and balanced overview of the issues read this:
https://www.outsideonline.com/2419401/monolith-moab-utah-shitshow