There are technically six corners to the borderlands I have chosen to walk. Four of those corners touch three states, one touches two states, one touches four states. The map to the right illustrates this cartographic fact. (The pushpins are stuck in the actual corners but that is hard to see on a map this size - those are relatively huge pushpins.) All geographic corners are fully packed with much more than the two dimensional turnings of a map, as you would guess.Wyoming, one of the closest to straight-sided square states, pushes its southwest corner deep into the natural corner of high mountain plateaus formed by the foothills of the north-south trending Wasatch Mountains and the (unusual for the U.S.) west-east trending Uinta Moutains. The legal description coordinate is just a short stroll from a road, hardtop gravel driving northeasterly and paved driving in the opposite direction (blue pushpin). Utah frames Wyoming in this ell, the borderlands there are either in one state or the other.
Some 97 miles due east then 276 miles due south is the quad state corner where Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona surround Utah and tourists can drive to the marked nexus of the cross to put alternate feet and hands in four states at one time, the only place in the United States where this is possible (green pushpin).
The corner for which I now search, where Idaho touches both Nevada and Utah, has no easy access and no tourist signs, no emblazoned cardinal directions and arrows pointing to the otherwise invisible borderlines that radiate from it. Four states touching is freakish, three states a more common trinity. More common and more complex at the same time. Trinities are not easily polarized whereas dualities are by definition polarized: yin and yang, gee and haw, toola rah and toola ray.
That last bit of foolishness comes courtesy of an Easter visit to le Barroux on the southeastern foothills of the Dentelles de Montmirail for what was supposed to be a morning of Gregorian Chants. That particular combination of French geography, historical timekeeping, and aesthetic vibration seemed a worthy trinity for a morning meditation from a former believer turned atheist. But although not recognized, God would still not be mocked, and his robed servants instead provided the full three hour plus service. Good and evil took full sway and the elocution of straight rail benches with steady calls to the naked prayer board made the message, though counterpointed by the French and Latin mass as clear as though through a dark glass: We rejoice to suffer. The chants felt truncated. What few escaped evoked the pure clear water of righteousness flowing from the tree of life. But truly, those brief moments? They were something. The rest was toolah rah and toolah ray
