The exposed, encrusted bed of the depleted Great Salt Lake stretches for miles and miles, merging with Utah’s West Desert somewhere off in a distance defined by mountain ridgelines rising above the horizon like jagged clouds.
Few know this rarely visited terrain better than Kevin Perry, an atmospheric sciences professor with the University of Utah who spent more than 125 days pedaling 2,300 miles of playa on a one-man data-gathering mission. His goal was to characterize the potential for the dry lakebed to release dust pollution over the Salt Lake City metro area, but he encountered things that utterly surprised him, including two bullet rounds shot at him.