Sun Tunnels

We drove into the fog and desert blindly, like small children running into a forest. Dave’s Buick consumed the miles in smooth, long strides while Pink Floyd massaged our ears from the Sirius Satellite network. I’d driven out to the west desert many times, but never cocooned in a thick shroud of fog. In Mr. Huntington’s Jr. High English class, we’d listened to Stephen King’s audio drama “The Mist”. Creatures came out of the fog and gobbled people up. I recall the images it left in my mind more than the story itself. The west desert is a fascinating place. It has a magnetism about it that pulls in those with wandering souls. Today the sun was absent behind the clouds and only a dozen yards could be seen in any direction. It was like driving into another world. After three years of failed attempts, we were finally going to see the Sun Tunnels. We pulled off I-80 just before Wendover and stopped at Sinclair to gas up and buy toilet paper. The attendant had never heard of Lucin or the Sun Tunnels, and knew that there was nothing up that road. We didn’t know for sure either, but were determined to find out. The wide, black asphalt gave way to cracked pavement, then a groomed dirt road. Once we were away from the station and the last vestiges of civilization, I felt the great coil in my spirit begin to unwind. To our left outstretched a ridge of violent and jagged rocks leading up to a tall peak. Old fences and abandoned farmhouses dotted the landscape, lending a historic and surreal quality to the scene. Every shade of yellow and brown poked up through the light blanket of snow and we could not help but stop to capture the beauty on film next to the Hastings Cutoff sign. According to the California Pioneer Trail sign, we weren’t very far from the Donner Reed pass. A part of me wanted to get out and search the mountainside for caves, treasure and multidimensional portals; a future summertime jaunt perhaps. The fog retreated to just before the horizon, and a murder of crows took flight one after another as we approached them from their successive fence posts. As five of them circled around in chaos, one crow remained at his station, watchful. Forty miles later we began to wonder about the correctness of our route and stopped at a farmhouse littered with gutted pickups, motor homes and bathtubs. Steve Galloway, a burly man sporting a thick, graying beard, told us we were only 6 or 7 miles shy of our destination. When I told him we were looking for the Sun Tunnels he gave me a fascinated look that said ‘why would anyone want to go there?’ As we thanked him and drove away, we knew that if we got stuck, he’d be the one to rescue us. It was his amused but cautious tone when he said,“Don’t get stuck” that said it. Turning around in his driveway, his wife and daughter stared at us like tourists warily eyeing two caged lions. His daughter had bolted out of the house upon first hearing my voice, with a short cropped mop of mangled blonde hair and wild eyes, and ran full bore at and then beside me. We left the mud and snow of Steve's compound and drank in the cool air in anticipation for what lay ahead. Our first wrong turn was onto a road lined with sharp rocks and a sign that said, “Unauthorized vehicles will experience severe tire damage.” It looked like a sign one might find in a western gift shop in Jackson Hole or West Yellowstone. It had a redneck yet serious feel to it, so we turned back and closed the first “Stay Out” gate on our way. The second wrong turn was an access road for a natural gas pipeline, but while turning around saw a big truck headed down a road a few miles down and know we were close. We’d spotted the Sun Tunnels while stopped at the Stay Out sign with binoculars. That didn’t make finding the right road any easier, however, so once the correct path was unveiled before our eyes, we approached the tunnels with great glee. Parked outside the perimeter of these behemoth tubes were several cars and numerous people milling around. A group of elementary school teachers from Logan were holding hands, dancing around their fire, and talking about bras. My own suspicion was that they were really a coven. A fellow UofU student named Dalton joined us in our marveling at the enigmatic structures. Everyone we met was disappointed that we didn’t have any beer. The sun tunnels are arranged in a cross with each arm aimed at the sunrise and sunset on the winter and Summer solstices. Each tunnel stands about 12 feet tall and 30 feet long. Cut into each one are head-sized holes arranged in constellation patterns whose corresponding stars can be seen from inside the tunnel on a clear night. Inside are mysterious swirling patterns that remind me of occult sigils. Pictures and words do the experience of looking through the tunnels no justice. It is a visceral, time-freezing moment that burns enlightenment into the brain like a Hiroshima shadow. The tubes, one appearing inside the other, seem to open a conduit into the heart of everything that is mysterious and beautiful about nature. It’s what the builders of Stonehenge sought. It’s what standing atop the Grand Canyon feels like: expansive, personal, and mysterious. And now as the fire dies away, with the logs so burned to ash that they appear covered in tin foil, my brother shakes the earth with the deep, primal thrum of his didgeridoo from within the tunnels. The quiet of the desert in winter eases my senses.
Dave and I wondered if sleeping inside the tunnels would incite strange dreams. My own recollections of those dreams are hazy visions of floating cities amid the cloud choked sky, and fighting crime. We were both warm and wrapped in our sleeping bags like burritos. Dave slept little but was comfortable while I sawed logs the whole night. By 5:30am we cleaned up our bags and blankets and were eager to watch the sunrise. We’d burned all our wood the night before, so we stood in the cold next to the video camera on time lapse and listened to a choir of wolves or coyotes very close to us. My heart was gripped with fear for a brief moment while images of tooth and claw mangled flesh flashed by. Just moments before dawn, a large pickup truck pulled in and a tall gentleman named Eldon got out. We turned down the satellite radio and the three of us stood and watched the sun peek over the mountains. As sunlight touched the clouds, the temperature also plummeted and we shivered for the first time since our arrival. Eldon regaled us with tales of his adventures as a nudist, the local burning man group; sharing with us the camaraderie that forms in a mysterious place like the Sun Tunnels. He left us and Dave cooked a dozen eggs and sausages while I carbonized some bacon. We cleaned up and bade the Sun Tunnels and their mysteries farewell, determined to return every solstice from then on. As the morning desert passed us by, we listened to an NPR program on mythology that seemed fitting for the mood of the day and place. Passing the ghost town, Lucin, which sits next to the railroad tracks, we were even more excited to return in the summertime to sleep while trains roared by, shaking the ground. Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels are an obscure and hidden jewel in the Western Utah desert. Along with the Spiral Jetty and Tree of Life, the tunnels stand as a monument not only to human ingenuity, but to the power of art in capturing the essence of imagination, mystery, and the important things in life.

Thanks to Dave McEntire for many of the above photos.