1 As Messian later recalled, his trip to Utah was more a In this collection of then, served as the first built sanctuaries in the region religious experience than a mere sightseeing excursion. Willie Holdman arresting photographs, that would one day come to be called Utah. The pictures he’d seen of Bryce Canyon had particularly invites us all Willie Holdman invites captivated him but seeing the canyon in person was us all into his personal The Southern Paiute similarly cultivated their own “even more beautiful than in the photographs.” Its into his personal sanctuaries, the places connections to the land, which they believed was given “extraordinary beauty” and “fantastic shapes” along with sanctuaries where he has found refuge to them by their gods. During the wintertime, the “all those wonderful colors” left him yearning to put what in Utah’s natural beauty. Tu-gwi-vai-gunt or elderly storytellers gathered band he saw into music. The piece he composed attempted In doing so, Holdman bids us to ponder the wonder members around a nighttime campfire to repeat the to do just that—capture the resplendent varieties of red of Utah and the messages its diverse landscapes are Southern Paiute creation story and thereby connect and orange, the color of the cliffs, in the notes that he waiting to share if we are quiet enough to listen. The the rising generation to the Southern Utah soil and wrote. “Whenever I hear music … I see colors,” Messian lone leaf in fall, the silent and stalwart stand of aspens simultaneously to their gods. The Southern Paiute explained, and Bryce Canyon inspired his musical palate in the cold of winter, the spring Columbine blooms in believed that the wolf Tabuts, under instruction from in new ways. remote Parunuweap Canyon, and the Virgin River Ocean Grandmother, carried their ancestors in a sack cutting a meandering path through the jagged red rocks to “the very best place, at the center of the world,” on Cedar Breaks was next on his itinerary and he was again of southern Utah, oblivious to the relentless heat of the north side of the Colorado River, and opened the struck with wonder at what he saw. “The feeling I had summer: collectively these images speak to the march sack. There they could find plenty of deer, pinon nuts Willie Holdman’s photographs there was religious,” he recounted. It was a “reverence of time and the ever changing seasons that witness both and agave to eat. The people liked their new home and collected here prompt us to before something sacred. One senses a divine presence,” the fading of life and its annual rebirth. Utah a Sanctuary decided to stay. Tabuts carried them to their land, he elaborated, and “one is subjugated to this feeling.” thus captures the beauty that surrounds us in all seasons placed them there, and in the process implied his divine ponder on the natural beauty As a result, he composed a piece titled “Cedar Breaks as well as the transcendent solace which silently approval. For the Paiute, their space had meaning and of Utah and the Gift of Awe.” communes with our hearts if we are willing to be still importance, and in the act of the gods placing them and heed its call. upon it, it became sacred. Finally, Messian encountered Zion National Park where In 1971 internationally acclaimed French composer his inner senses were again elevated. “The atmosphere It is no wonder then, that in the 1870s when federal Olivier Messiaen received a commission to compose is more somber, serene, more sacred, even more celes- Indian agents tried to move the Southern Paiute to the a symphony in celebration of the upcoming bicentennial tial,” he remembered. “I believe that it is indeed celestial Uintah Reservation in northern Utah, they resisted. of the United States. He was naturally honored and set because the Mormons, who discovered this place, One Paiute explained it this way: “We love our country; about looking for inspiration in his library of over 7,000 called it Zion Park. Zion in the Bible is the synonym we know not other lands. We hear that other lands are books, including a series on the wonders of the world. of Jerusalem, not of the earthly Jerusalem, but of the better; we do not know … We do not want their good To that point in his life, Messian had spent most of his celestial city itself, thus the gift of heaven.” For Messian, lands, we want our rocks and the great mountains where time in Europe and wondered how to capture the Zion Canyon was indeed a gift from heaven and so he our fathers lived.” essence of the United States in music. He grew up as composed a piece which he called “Zion Park and a gifted musician and entered the Paris Conservatory the Celestial City.” His symphony thus ended with a It is a mistake, then, to view Native American space as at age eleven. He was well on his way to a promising mediation on one of Utah’s natural wonders, something simply geopolitical and economic. As government ex- career when World War II erupted. He was drafted into Messian considered an earthly “paradise” or a sanctuary plorer John Wesley Powell explained, “The land the French Army and was subsequently captured by in the desert. belonging to an Indian clan or tribe is dear to it not only German soldiers. He spent time in a German prisoner as a region from which it obtains subsistence but chiefly of war camp where he composed one of his most Messian is only one example of countless people who The Ancestral Puebloans (previously known as Anasazi) because it is the locus of its religion.” Long before famous pieces, Quartet for the End of Time, which have found their souls stirred by Utah’s scenic wonders. who occupied much of present-day Southern Utah for Euro-American pioneers pushed west to seek refuge he first performed in 1941 in front of an audience of In fact, Utah has long served as a sanctuary for a variety over seven hundred years, demonstrated the earliest in Utah’s mountains and deserts, Native peoples had prisoners and prison guards. But now he was of groups who have sought refuge in its varied known ritualistic attachment to the land and their own cultivated their own sanctuaries quite literally grounded commissioned to write a symphony to celebrate the landscapes. From Native American peoples to European sense of sacred space. They built community structures in their deeply held connections to the land. two-hundredth anniversary of the American founding. travelers, and from Mormon pioneers to immigrants from called kivas where scholars believe they may have After perusing his vast collection of books, Messiaen around the globe, the high mountains and low deserts; performed ceremonial rituals centered on their creation The same was true in concluded that “the grandest and the most beautiful the deep blue skies, blazing sunsets, and rejuvenating story which taught that humans emerged from an “The mountains, Northern Utah where marvels of the world must be the canyons of Utah. sunrises; the red rock monoliths, whimsical hoodoos, underworld through a hole in the earth known as streams, and the Northwest Band of So, I’ll have to get to Utah.” and mystic arches; the vast open expanses, narrow slot a sipapu. Ancestral Puebloans thus connected their Shoshone hunted and canyons, and tranquil alpine meadows each evoke a very existence to the earth; their kivas offered them plains stood gathered. As Darren Parry, Messian did travel to Utah and like so many others before sense of peace and transcendent awe which elevates opportunities to gather and reflect on that connection forever.” tribal chairman explained, him he was awe struck by what he found. As a result, the souls of those who encounter them. and meditate on their own sense of the divine. As the “We traveled with the Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, and Zion Canyon became Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition noted of the sacred changing seasons. We looked upon the earth as not central inspirations for the twelve-movement orchestral Bears Ears region in southeastern Utah, “these places just a place to live, but as our Mother, the provider of work titled From the Canyons to the Stars, which are not just national monuments and beautiful our livelihood and our very existence.” Shoshone women premiered in 1974 at the Lincoln Center in New York City. landscapes—these are our churches and alters.” Kivas, and men were therefore tied to their land not merely 2 3 economically, but metaphysically. “The mountains, three or four places with timber… The sky is very clear, The sense of reverence the canyon conjured for Behunin ture generations. As we look, we might also listen, with streams, and plains stood forever, and the seasons the air delightful and altogether looks glorious.” was repeated when nineteenth-century surveyor French composer Olivier Messiaen, for the musical notes walked around them annually. Our bodies were created He worried about the absence of timber in the valley but Clarence Dutton visited Southern Utah. “Nothing exceeds that surround us in the vibrant colors that clothe Utah’s from her dust; blood that runs through our veins flows predicted that the wonderous beauty of Little Zion Valley,” Dutton sanctuaries. In the twenty-first century Utah’s strong like the mountain streams from which it came,” if the Saints could find coal, they would do well “and concluded. “No wonder the fierce Mormon zealot, who economy has continued to attract new peoples to the Parry elaborated.