These odd hostilities have drawn me west, to the Tooele Valley, in late November and early December nearly every year I have lived in Utah. I wait for a silvery day, a day when it’s chilly and dry. A day when the sky taunts the limits of monochrome with clouds of every density, layered in ribbons from heavy, dark gunmetal to a bright, icy almost-gold white wherever the sun is about to break through.
On the ground, on a day like that, the west slopes of the Oquirrh Mountains showcase every texture of decay. The rabbitbrush have faded from yellow flowers to blondish fluff over foliage that shifts from green to brittle gray.