Utah! A Novel

By Levi Rogers

Fleeing from ever present wildfires and the threat of the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupting, Lee, Becca, and their daughter Analise embark on a road-trip through the state of Utah to a wedding in Zion National Park. Set in the not-too-distant-future, Utah! is a novel about climate change and the intricacies of relationships-between family, partn

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637528914

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Utah!

A NOVEL

Levi Rogers

atmosphere press

Copyright © 2021 Levi Rogers

Published by Atmosphere Press

Cover design by Beste Miray Doğan

No part of this book may be reproduced

except in brief quotations and in reviews

without permission from the author.

Utah!

2021, Levi Rogers

atmospherepress.com

Prologue

I first encountered this peculiar book beneath the rubble of houses and ash in the western part of the country, in a region formerly known as Utah. I was a human history professor (one of the last) whose area of expertise revolved around the United States of America, specifically studying the decline of the American empire in the early to mid-21st century. I always found the Western Hemisphere fascinating, as it was where my grandparents lived before emigrating east after the Event. When I first found the book, printed on actual ink and paper and hung in a strange and not very efficient plastic cover with three rings that held the pages together, I thought nothing much of it. It appeared to be the work of an amateur author, perhaps the thesis or finished product of a grad student. I stuffed it into my bag along with the other relics of what life was like back then. I took the book back home across the Pacific, set it on my counter. Completely forgot about it. Yet one day, out of sheer boredom from being trapped inside from yet another airborne virus and hazardous air quality, I picked the book up and began to read. The more I read it, however, the more I realized that, while never traditionally published, the manuscript produced a remarkable window into what life was like during the decline of Western democracy.

Now, it’s unclear who the author of the text was, but based on some historical digging and information gathered from the technological sources of data that existed then, the work seems to be a fictionalized version of actual events that at least loosely took place. It appears to be written by someone with a close knowledge of all parties involved, perhaps existing as an autobiographical novel of some kind. (Due to the events portrayed, it seems impossible that the author could have spoken to each of the characters or participants involved in the story, but who knows?) The book is dedicated to The People of Utah, and it seems clear that the author must have spent a considerable amount of time in this region—despite it remaining uninhabitable for a large amount of time post-catastrophe. My guess is a family member of some kind, though how any survived the ordeal I know not.

I have decided to publish it here as a found artifact of a bygone era, one that exists as a sort of fictional companion piece to my earlier book, The Major Events and Decline of the United States of America in the 21st Century: How Ecological Collapse, Algorithms, and Authoritarianism Led to the Dissolution of One of the World’s Great Empires.

It is a strange book in that it is about the disastrous events of that era, and yet also remains firmly rooted in the quotidian. I myself am glad to have not lived during the time (except for the widely available coffee of course). I can only imagine the existential dread and feelings of helplessness that must have permeated the globe. Yet I write now from the comfort of my home in a world that, while still suffering the effects of previous generations of neglect, still exists because some people rose to the occasion beyond political party or nation-state lines and were able to unite humanity (though I’m afraid you will not find any such optimism in the pages that follow).

I also publish this book as a warning to future generations, for it seems we are never quite as removed from the mistakes and sins of our past as we are wont to believe. As a personal history, Utah! should make all of us apply ourselves with still greater vigilance to bringing up a better generation in a more inhabitable world.

- C. Robert Ryono III Ph.D.

Utah!

A Novel

By

Unknown

Dedicated to

The People of Utah

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Dutch Oven      3

Chapter Two: Copper      32

Chapter Three: Bonneville Cutthroat Trout      61

Chapter Four: Allosaurus      112

Chapter Five: California Gulls      148

Chapter Six: Quaking Aspen      168

Chapter Seven: Browning M1911      209

Chapter Eight: Beehive      222

Chapter Nine: Sego Lily      270

Chapter Ten: Rocky Mountain Elk      287

Epilogue: Coal      301

Map Description automatically generated

Map by @Lordofmaps

Chapter One:

Dutch Oven

Saturday

Adiós America

Logan, Utah

Smoke and ash stung Becca’s nostrils when she entered the outside world. The air smelled of campfire and pine as a yellow haze smothered the streets in every direction. Wildfires. From Montana and Idaho to Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and of course, California. The entire West was on fire. White smoke from Baja to British Columbia, San Francisco to Salt Lake.

It was Labor Day weekend and the fires in the U.S. now burned earlier, longer, and hotter. The rains came less frequently. The temperatures refused to cool, even at night. You could feel the air—dry, hot, and stagnate, ready to burst. Becca’s eyes began to water as she looked up at the sun. The yellow star was now the color of pink lemonade.

Lee, we need to go! Becca shouted inside, as she opened the front door with her daughter, Analise, in the car seat. Now!

A tiny scream issued from underneath the blanket.

Shhh, Becca whispered. I know, it’ll be okay.

Would it though?

Becca shut the front door behind her and rushed down the stairs to get the baby in the car and out of the smoke. Their small neighborhood of Logan, Utah, was still asleep. Nothing moved besides the birds. No cars, no humans. No wind. Just smoke and ash. The smell of hot doom in the atmosphere.

Did these people not see? Did they not hear?

It was a level-two evacuation, meaning, be packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Yet not quite a level-three evacuation—i.e., Go now! The fire was still a few miles away. Yet Becca didn’t want to be a story on KSL news later, one of a mom with a charred baby trapped in a car off the side of a road who had waited too long to leave. They were evacuating south to stay with family in Salt Lake and beyond. Becca buckled Analise inside the car and ran back inside.

In a way, Becca thought of these wildfires as a strange mercy. She didn’t know whether she could handle being a mother and she saw no way out. She and Lee were trying to make it work—they’d even gotten married—but the question of whether they were going to make it work was still undecided. Becca wanted to be a good mother more than anything in the world. Yet she had a sick feeling in her stomach that she never would. She was tired of being alone with an infant and only too happy to go someplace where she would have help. She wanted an out.

Lee!

What?

Are you listening to me?

Becca was standing in the doorway to the basement now looking down.

You never listen, Becca continued. You’re always lost in your head.

Lee began to roll his eyes as he leapt up the stairs with some instant meals and their camping stove.

"And don’t roll your eyes at me. It’s the number one sign of divorce," she said.

He greeted her, as if to apologize, with a small kiss on her cheek.

Well, you rolled your eyes back there at me earlier in the kitchen you know, he said.

Becca rolled her eyes at him again, Did we get everything?

I hope so.

Lee grabbed the rest of their supplies in the kitchen, the smell of freshly brewed coffee permeating their duplex. Becca grabbed their travel mugs and left the Chemex sitting by the sink.

The two of them walked outside and Lee locked the front door of their tiny duplex behind them, Becca sarcastically thinking that the imminent destruction of the planet via a volcano or earthquake or wildfire seemed more pleasant to her than marriage or motherhood. But that’s also why she’d married Lee, their shared sense of dark humor—and Analise, of course.

They walked briskly down the stairs.

Did you get the bottles? Becca asked him.

Yes.

Did you get the diaper bag?

Yes.

Denali?

She’s in the car. Analise?

I just put her in.

See? said Lee, smiling, trying to ease the tension because he was a people pleaser by nature. We’re killing this parenting thing.

At least we haven’t killed each other yet, said Becca.

Our ourselves, said Lee. 

Becca and Lee smiled at each other as they each opened a car door—the only moment of considerate pause for each other in their whole morning.

Becca looked up into the sky. Ash floated to the ground like snow. It fell atop the cars and driveways in the fresh white sprinkle of disappearing forests. Lee loaded the rest of their supplies into the topper of their old green Outback, Yellowstone National Park and Keep Tahoe Blue stickers adorning the side.

Becca raced around the front of the car.

Lee buckled his seatbelt and put the car in drive.

The Pack ‘n’ Play! Becca shouted. It was still on the porch. Lee returned to park.

I’ll get it, he sighed, opening his door, but Becca was already out the car. She ran back up the stairs, grabbed the Pack ‘n’ Play, ran back down, opened up the hatch and shoved the Pack ‘n’ Play inside, slamming the hatch shut. The loud noise made Analise flinch.

Lee raised an eyebrow at Becca as she returned to the passenger door, and then he shut his door, gently, as if to show her how one was supposed to shut the doors of the car with a tiny baby, gently.

Oh, please, she said to Lee. She was going to cry either way. She’s been fussy all morning.

They sped off down the road, their car haphazardly packed with camping gear, suitcases, laptops, journals, pictures, passports, wallets, birth certificates, insurance information, toiletries, tote bags, diapers and wipes, and everything else they considered valuable—which, actually, wasn’t much.

Becca wondered if they’d ever see their tiny duplex again. She didn’t care, really. It was a rental anyways. Besides, the world was burning. Adiós America.

The (Possible) Paranoias of Lehi Smith

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

They said the immediate kill zone would spread radially for 200 miles. From northwestern Wyoming, to northern Utah, southwestern Montana, and the eastern side of Idaho. Molten lava would kill anyone in the direct vicinity as it spread through channels in the earth like a flash flood. Thick viscous rapids of dark-red, black, and bright-orange lava would cascade, serpentine-like, through the forest, fields, and valleys. Pyroclastic flows of up to 430 miles per hours would flatten everything as people’s lungs filled with poisonous gas and ash. The exploding caldera might even flash-heat people to death as Pompeian fossils for future generations to discover. And those were the easy deaths—instant.

The tephra—a mixture of ash and volcanic rock—was the bigger problem. It would cover crops like a heavy snowfall and catch in the engines of airplanes like a billion little birds—effectively shutting down air travel and agricultural production for months, maybe years. Water sources across North America would be poisoned. All ground water and wells polluted for years to come. The grid itself might go down. Lahars of mud and scalding hot water would course through river valleys cutting off roads and infecting rivers with debris and volcanic material.

As the ash spread into the atmosphere it would soon eclipse the sun, setting off a volcanic winter, a global ice age, altering the cycle of the earth’s seasons. Salt Lake City itself would be covered in ten to thirty centimeters of ash. For underneath Yellowstone National Park lay a large caldera, a magma chamber, a subterranean Supervolcano, poised to erupt. And if it did, day would turn into night. There would be no electricity, no internet. No water. No sun.

For many years this caldera, this huge caldera, stretching thirty by forty-five miles and containing enough molten lava to fill the Grand Canyon ten times over, had heated orange and blue acid pools and shimmering hot springs. It boiled water from deep beneath the earth and sent it blasting through small holes in the earth’s crust like the popping of a champagne bottle.

And now this morning, the color code for this very same Yellowstone Supervolcano had been upgraded from Green, or Normal, to Yellow, or Advisory. Code Yellow meant that the volcano was exhibiting signs of elevated unrest above known background level. (Green was the lowest code color, followed by yellow, orange, and then red). A small chain of earthquakes had roiled the region.

Lehi Smith read this news alert on his phone next to the sink in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil so he could make coffee. What Lee should have been thinking about was the wildfire evacuation they were currently in the midst of, but Lee couldn’t help himself. Lee had evacuated from wildfires before; they were nothing (and this one was still a few miles away). But a volcano, now that was something!

VOLCANO OBSERVATORY WEEKLY UPDATE

U.S. Geological Survey

Saturday 12:44 PM PDT (Sunday 19:44 UTC)

Yellowstone

Current Volcano Alert Level: ADVISORY

Current Aviation Color Code: YELLOW

Activity Update: Low-level unrest at the Yellowstone Caldera has continued over the past week. Satellite and web camera observations of the volcano have been obscured by clouds for portions of the week, but clear views showed a small steam plume from the summit on three days this week and minor elevated surface temperatures were observed. The level of seismic activity remains above known background level, with nearly continuous weak-tremor and occasional low-frequency earthquakes occurring over the past week. No evidence of eruptive activity has been observed this week.

Although the current level of unrest at the volcano remains low, it is possible for activity to escalate at any time with little warning. Thus, ash emission, lava effusion, and the possibility of lahars in the drainages extending from the volcano remain plausible outcomes of escalating unrest. 

The U.S. Geological Survey and Yellowstone Volcano Observatory continue to monitor this closely and will issue additional updates and changes in alert level as warranted.

Lee had both a Google alert and a USGS or VNS alert set on his phone for any news involving the Yellowstone Supervolcano. Mostly it was a lot of non- or misinformation. Noninformation from the USGS and misinformation from Google and conspiracy theorists. But today, today! he was finally met by something exciting, straight from the U.S. Geological Societies Volcano Notification System!

While Lee waited for the water, he took a bite of Crown burger from the night before and dunked a handful of cold fries into a small white bowl of fry sauce. As he lifted the cold, soggy fries to his mouth, a small dab of sauce splashed onto the otherwise pristine screen of his smartphone.

Shit, he muttered.

He got up to grab a paper towel to clean his phone, then proceeded to finish packing some items from the kitchen (cast-iron skillet, Dutch oven, spatula, water bottles) pausing for a few brief but hurried seconds at a time to take a bite of his breakfast, and then finally make a Chemex once the water was heated. His wife Becca and his newborn daughter, Analise, were in their bedroom packing, nearly ready to go.

Lee ground the beans, wet the filter, and began pouring, his mind cranking in full force. Lee felt a pulse of excitement and adrenaline as they prepared to leave. He was, he guessed you could say, something of a prepper. His whole life he’d been preparing for something like the Yellowstone Supervolcano to explode. He wasn’t, like, crazy, or anything. At least, he didn’t think so. He just liked to be prepared.

A crazy person was a crazy person. A prepper was prepared.

Becca was nervous, he could tell, but that was more because of the baby than anything. This wildfire evacuation would be like a mini-test for them.

Lee finished brewing the coffee, poured it into a thermos, and pulled out his phone one last time to check the weather. In truth, Lee wanted the Yellowstone Supervolcano to explode. He wanted it to explode because he thought in the long run it would be good for humanity and the earth. In the short term it would be bad, yes, really bad, of course, but in the long run carbon emissions would be lowered, animals would return, and lives, yes, actual human lives would be saved! Just look at what happened with the last global pandemic—carbon emissions down, deer running through Michigan suburbs—because it was humans and corporations and how they treated the earth that was the true virus on the planet.

Lee was an anarcho-primitivist, he guessed, if you had to put labels on it. One who thought that society was mean to live in tribes and not a mass-produced technological society of suburbs and strip malls and alienation, where polarization caused by social media algorithms led to upending democracy and increasing isolation. Lee thought something as big as a Supervolcano might return society to a more tribal structure.

Yet, to Lee’s disappointment, he knew most of the scientists and volcanologists cautioned that Yellowstone might not necessarily explode in such a cinematic and apocalyptic fashion. It might never explode, or not for hundreds of years. It might simply ooze lava like fresh toothpaste in a fairly harmless manner, as Kilauea did some years ago in Hawai’i.

There were over 160 active volcanoes in the world after all, forty-five of which were currently erupting, and yet, the world went on. Real life was rarely as dramatic as Hollywood movies; it was subtler and more complicated, crueler and more dangerous, and more monotonous than any fiction. Yet nature was indifferent to our politics, schemes, and plots. Still, Lee wondered, didn’t these things always mean something? What was the Earth trying to tell us?

As Lee ran downstairs to grab the camping stove and some propane, he heard a tiny scream from Analise. It was almost time for her mid-morning nap. They needed to get on the road, soon.

Downstairs Lee grabbed the camping stove and tried to decide what instant meals to bring from their emergency meal supply kit. Scrambled eggs with ham and peppers or granola with milk and blueberries? Porque no los dos? He heard the front door open and shut.

It wasn’t just Supervolcanos and wildfires, though. All over the western United States that summer, the air swelled with heat and the leaves fell to the ground and combusted. The water supply stretched thin, and people from the Southwest migrated to forests in the North as the planet grew angrier. Forest fires blazed from California to the Arctic. Dust storms blew frequently. The rich were moving to New Zealand and Canada.

But no one really wanted to stop what they were doing to combat the threat of climate change or another pandemic or ecological disaster, or at least, had the wealth or luxury to do so. There were practical concerns, after all. For businesses and banks and lenders and credit agencies. Mortgage solvency, for one. What if people abandoned their houses and second cars and mortgage payments? What if you owned a business? The economy would shutter, again. Best to go about business as usual. We didn’t want another recession.

The threat of an apocalypse might mean big money for the entertainment world, but it signaled death for the economy and even literal death for millions of others.

Why were we so fascinated with the end of the world? Did we secretly desire it?

Even though everyone else might be unsure if something that had been predicted for many years was actually here to call humanity to awe and repentance, Lee wasn’t. Despite the advice of volcanologists and men and women from the U.S. Geological Society for many years to stay calm, despite the one in 700,000 chance of such occurrence, Lee was sure this was it. Perhaps humanity deserved such a fate. Perhaps it would be a sudden mercy. Perhaps—Lee!

A voice from upstairs woke him from his troubled thoughts.

Lee! We need to go, now!

* * *

Well, where to? Lee asked, after they turned onto the main highway. A few moments of silence between them to collect their thoughts.

I don’t know, said Becca, rubbing her eyes. I just want to go somewhere and chill.

We could do that, said Lee, taking a sip from his coffee mug. Like a beach?

Sure, yeah, we could go to a beach . . . in Utah, said Becca, rolling her eyes.

Oh, also, that reminds me, do you want to stay with my parents tonight? Or your mom or maybe your brother? I need to call one of them to let them know we’re coming.

I really just, this sounds bad I know, but could we just get a hotel tonight with the three of us?

You mean the four of us?

Four?

The dog! You always forget about the dog now.

Becca rolled her eyes, again.

Yeah, four, okay. I just, don’t you think a hotel would be nice?

Lee raised his eyebrows.

Come on. It’ll be like a Wildfire-Evacuation-Staycation, said Becca, her eyes all wild and excited.

Well, said Lee, pausing, I actually think that’s a great idea!

Then for once we’re in agreement.

For once.

Lee nodded and smiled. They drove past the turnoff for Promontory Point—the site where the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific Railroad in 1869, creating the world’s first transcontinental railroad, built primarily, he knew, by 12,000 Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Past the turnoff for the Spiral Jetty, an art installation that curved like a spiraling hook into the salt-filled lake. Past the boxed and chained stores, headed south. 

Lee, despite the evacuation, was excited. His whole life he had wanted to be whisked off on some magical adventure. To be a character in The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or maybe even just live a couple hundred years ago and be some sort of frontiersman. Live during a time when everything was more visceral and life-or-death. Modern life was not filled with great struggles of such clear-cut good and evil, and survival. Or, perhaps it was; it was just different. The same evils existed, but now it all just involved a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy and waiting in lines. You voted and lobbied and wrote to your congressman perhaps, maybe protested. Yet the monsters of the day were corrupt politicians and corporations and systemic injustices. One had to be fluent in words like data mining and algorithms. Your battles and fights were not against dark lords but with racism, mental health, pornography, drug abuse, white nationalism, and capitalism. Things you could not exactly fix by charging at them with a battle axe or tomahawk. No wonder alienated and disaffected individuals picked up guns to shoot. But volcanos were prehistoric, otherworldly.

They drove south on I-5. Becca scrolled through her phone and Analise was now asleep. The whole of Utah stretched out before them.

Growing up, Lee couldn’t wait to get married and have kids. Now he felt as if being a husband and a father was a pleasant, but stifling, burden. When he was young, he could never understand how men could leave their wives and children and start life in another part of the country. Now he could understand it all too well. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family. It wasn’t even that he missed his freedom or nights out drinking and partying (what few he’d had after leaving the Church). It was something more primal, something within him that called him to distance himself from everyone and everything for the sake of survival and his own mental health. Something about how a wife and a child seemed to wrap and compress around Lee’s body like a boa constrictor. Or maybe this is just how one got rid of one’s own selfishness—the way snakes shed their skin.

Becca at the Beach

The blue water in front of Becca sparkled in the late morning heat. She walked to the edge of the beach, took off her sandals, threw a tote bag down in front of her and shook an old Mexican wool blanket onto the sand. Two scrub oak trees floated on a hill in the sand to their left. Lee walked up behind her, balancing their six-month-old daughter, Analise, a small cooler, a diaper bag, and the leash of their dog, struggling to hold onto one without letting