For the last several weeks I've been reading about a series of odoriferous events that have occurred in and around Salt Lake City, that great golden olympic home of our hearts to the north. For all its obvious appeal, something stinks up there these days and no one is quite sure what the cause of it is.

The stench comes from two different directions and, until this moment, was regarded as separate stories by the general media.

First came reports of a terrible but unidentifiable smell that drove residents from their homes and offices and stores and even sent a few to the hospital. There were concerns of natural gas leaks and industrial contaminants and almost everyone found the odor to be overpowering and disgusting. But as air quality control officials raced to these stinky sites to capture samples for analysis and identification, the odor would just vanish before the guys with the lab coats could even get out their sampling equipment. A couple of days later the smell would pop up in some other part of the city.

Officials were at a loss; rumors started to circulate that the smell was some warning of an impending earthquake. One story on the internet claimed that the smell was the result of tectonic plate movement and that it was somehow releasing petroleum fumes from deep below the planet's surface. Geologists dismissed the rumor as ridiculous.

Then smelly things started falling from the sky. More than a month ago, residents of a home in Salt Lake City awoke to find their abode doused with untreated sewage. Little brown quarter-sized splatter marks covered the house and part of the lawn. The family called the fire department which was reluctant to deal with the dumped sewage, but finally agreed to hose down the structure with a chlorine-based solution.

Since then seven other homes in the Salt Lake Valley have been bombed from above and no one seems to know where this shit is coming from. The Federal Aviation Administration has all but ruled out a commercial airline; they claim that if any sewage were dumped from a jet, it would be frozen and mixed with the blue disinfectant used by all airlines to treat toilet waste. The stuff splattering houses in Salt Lake has obviously, to everyone's noses, not been treated at all.

Speculation has run the gamut of possibilities, from crop duster bi-planes and practical joker pilots to kids with large movable long distance catapults. But everyone wants to know where this shit is coming from and everyone wonders...who is next?

Maybe it's...all of us.

This is a very religious state, probably more religious than any other state in America. We are always looking for signs of divine intervention. I know some residents of Utah who have had three or four religious experiences in an afternoon. An apple falls out of a tree and lands in a patch of sunlight, and some of the faithful will fall to their knees and proclaim, "It's a sign! A sign from above!"

Well...if untreated sewage falling from the sky from unknown sources and drenching Salt Lake City houses in brown goop isn't a sign from above, tell me what is. I think that it comes from God. I believe that the Great Hairy Thunderer is trying to tell the people of the Beehive State something and I think He is frustrated. He may have been trying to contact us for quite some time and finally sought desperate means to get our attention. Even Deities can lose patience.

But why? Why would the Big Cahone besmirch us in such a way? Why would He single out the Great State of Utah to vent His anger upon? What could we have possibly done to annoy God?

You must be kidding.

I don't even know where to start. There's...you know...so much material. But I'll try. For starters, what does God think of our olympic games? He must surely be proud of us for that one. We singlehandedly did what no other olympic city has ever been able to do in the history of the games---we got caught. I don't know if God is more angry because we have no morals, or because we're so stupid.

And what does the Creator think of our uncontrolled growth and development? As I recall, God created grass and meadows and trees and bubbling brooks. Does He mind if we convert all those creations to strip malls, apartment complexes and sewage lagoons?

What about over-population? God said something about going forth and multiplying and replenishing the Earth. I didn't think He meant 'standing room only.'

What does God think of our gun laws? Does God pack a gun? What does God think of us leaving loaded weapons lying around the house, where our children can get hold of them and shoot each other? If God had wanted us to carry firearms, He would have given us barrels instead of fingers. He would have given us bullets instead of spit.

And how about the Utah Legislature? Or a mayor named Deedee? I could go on and on and on...

I think God is torqued.

And that leads me back to that Original Stench, the odor that moves from one part of the city to another. It smells like Hell, but maybe it is Hell. Maybe the Gates to Hell are right now being cranked open for imminent and immediate departure. Wouldn't that be something? One day there's Salt Lake City---crowded, polluted, congested...smelly. And then suddenly, it's gone. Without a trace. Is this theory all that unreasonable an explanation? Should Salt Lake City be worried?

We should all be worried. Because after Salt Lake's gone...who's next?

I'd bet money on Garfield County.

Epilogue: As we prepare to go to press, stories of "copycat" brown bombings have been reported in northern Utah. Like...false gods?

Bad Times Coming at Big Water

For decades, the state of Utah and the federal government have been wrangling over the disposition of state school trust lands. Within each township in Utah are four state sections. Those sections were supposed to generate revenue for the state, but because of the random distribution of those sections they often wound up in the middle of national parks. Utah claimed that the landlocked nature of those state sections limited their ability to be developed and exploited. At one point Utah actually threatened to turn one state section at Arches National Park into an RV campground.

A couple of years ago, Governor Leavitt and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt worked out a huge land swap. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Recently, however, I read that Utah has acquired an enormous 44,000 acre parcel of land in southern Utah as part of the trade that could forever change this isolated and...colorful corner of the state.

It's called Big Water and right now it's not much to look at. A smattering of sunbleached double-wides and rusty butler buildings dot the landscape, along with a generous helping of broken down pickup trucks and washing machines. But if the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration has its way, life is going to change dramatically. The state agency wants to develop the land for its tourist and retirement community potential---Sun City Utah-style---and projects that in the decades ahead, "tens of thousands" of people will build homes there. Sitting on the edge of Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument and just a stone's throw from Lake Powell, it is bound to attract vast numbers of would-be buyers and land speculators.

No one will feel the change more than the current residents of this marginal little town. Until now, Big Water's greatest claim to fame was its outspoken and flamboyant polygamist leader, Alex Joseph. Until his death last year, Alex and his twenty-odd wives (the number fluctuated over the years) have lived out there on the edge of forever for decades.

Twenty years ago, they called the town Glen Canyon City and Alex and his women ran the Red Desert Cafe. I was wandering that summer, trying to find a place to throw down some roots and for a while I almost wound up in Kanab. I'd heard about Alex and the rumor that he had the prettiest wives in southern Utah, so on my way to Kanab, I stopped at the Cafe for breakfast one morning.

The rumors were all true. One of his wives was a doctor, another was a lawyer...they were all beautiful. Then Alex came in. He had a beer gut and stringy black hair pulled back in a ponytail and he needed a shave and I thought: What does this guy have that I don't have?

But he had something because the Joseph women seemed to almost swoon when they saw Alex. "You'd just have to get to know him like we do, to understand," one of the women explained. Then she blushed and said, "Well maybe not like we know him."

I chatted with Alex and his sidekick for a few minutes. His buddy was the spitting image of Wild Bill Hickock, from the handlebar mustache to the fringed deerskin coat. Then I said my goodbyes to the wives and left for Kanab. A couple weeks later I found myself applying for a job as a teacher's assistant at the Kane County High School. I had an interview with the principal and the superintendent of schools and I had even shaved off my beard for the occasion. Despite my squeaky clean look, I sensed hostility. They asked me if I knew anyone in Kanab.

"Well...not here in Kanab," I explained, "But I do know Alex Joseph."

I don't what I was thinking about. Maybe I had a death wish. Maybe I'd already sub-consciously determined that Kanab was not the place for me.

"Alex Jo--," the principal caught himself. He stared at me for a moment, then he leaned back and smiled. "Old Alex...he's getting noisy again out there at Glen City. Lavar, when was the last time we had a little...chat with Alex?" He winked and grinned at me.

"Been a couple o' years I'd say, Bob. Are you thinkin' it's time to pay the Josephs another visit?"

"I think that's just what we need to do," said Bob.

The conversation between them continued for a few minutes and they almost forgot I was there. Finally, I was offered a part-time job. Eight hours a week at minimum wage. I shaved off my beard for this? I thought. I declined their kind offer and left immediately for Moab. On the drive back, I stopped again at the Red Desert Cafe, this time to warn the Josephs of the veiled threats. One of the wives ran and found Alex and a moment later I was telling my "Bob and Lavar" story to Alex and Wild Bill.

Alex rolled his eyes and chuckled. "If those fellers come snooping around here, I don't reckon they'll be a problem." He pulled back his jacket and revealed what looked to be a Colt .45 stuffed in his belt. Wild Bill opened both sides his fringe coat and said, "That goes double for me."

I left town and never saw Alex again.

Alex Joseph is gone now and I doubt if Big Water will ever see his likes again. It's too bad because characters like Alex are what have always made the West a special (if not very weird) place. Big Water's future will turn on big money not tall tales. And what about the men and women who were truly "larger than life?"

No room. No room for characters in the New West.