At an elevation of 6,000 feet, Cove Fort, Utah, is a zone of physical and cultural transitions, a land of extremes.1 In the summer, daytime temperatures can soar over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit before plummeting at nightfall. A frost visits every month of the year. Winters are especially harsh. It is not uncommon for temperatures to register twenty, even thirty, degrees below zero. The wind blows constantly, pausing only at sunset, leaving the air breathless and suspended.2 There is water, but it is locked deep underground, reachable only by machine-drilled wells. Any surface water comes from snow melt that trickles down mountain draws and canyons from the east. By mid-May, sometimes early April, these sources run dry. Like much of the Great Basin, Cove Fort country is affected by eastward moving Pacific storm systems. The Sierra Nevada trap most of the moisture from these systems; the north–south running...

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