THE NEVERLAND
By Jeremy Pugh
On my 21st birthday, we both got tattoos and drove to Wendover. It was, we supposed, something adult and daring marking my last night as a child. She and I, in the dark together, with the same tattoo, on that long road west, yearning to grow up. Past the Great Salt Lake, I-80 straightens and human light dwindles to high beams. This is a Utah story — a mirage of unknown adulthood at the end of a lonely 122 miles through a chalk-white desert to the border of saint and sin. The road to Wendover exists forever in a silent, dark vacuum, a paradox where that night, the girl with the same tattoo, my 20s stretch off into the distance. And exist somewhere out there still.
Jeremy Pugh has been writing about culture, history and the outdoors in Utah for more than two decades. He is the author of “100 Things to Do in SLC” and “Secret Salt Lake City” and the editor of Salt Lake City magazine. Pugh’s work has also appeared in SKI, Lonely Planet, Condé Nast Traveler and more.