(cheerful music) - Welcome to 'This Is Utah'.

I'm Liz Adeola.

We are here at the Bonneville Salt Flats, just one of many amazing areas in the State where people flock, in hopes of capturing some of Utah's natural beauty.

In this special episode, we hit the road for you, giving you a front row seat to the awe and wonder of the constellations.

Viewed through the Sun Tunnels, learn the connection between art, time and space.

The interstellar journey continues with a trip to the Mars Desert Research Station.

Experience life on Mars, Utah style.

Plus it's called the world's longest outdoor gallery.

Take a hike with us to explore the hidden gems of rock art, found in Nine Mile Canyon.

- [Narrator] Support for 'This Is Utah' comes from The Willard L Eccles Foundation, The Lawrence T. and Janet T. Dee Foundation, the Utah Office of Tourism, The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, and the contributing members of PBS Utah.

Thank you.

(Upbeat cheerful music) - Nine Mile Canyon runs from Duchesne to Carbon County in the eastern part of Utah.

The rock art that you see here is a part of the world's longest art gallery, a unique display that gives us insight into cultures from the past.

(cheerful music) - Nine Mile Canyon is one of three or four major canyons that are in the kind of the north eastern Utah Northwestern Colorado area, that harbor evidence of the Fremont culture covering from around AD 500 to 1400s.

They're rugged up and down canyons with good water.

They provide a good homeland for the Fremont of this particular part of the world, farmers and hunter gatherers, and they left significant rock art.

And one of the most renowned areas in North America for rock art.

(cheerful music) - Other places may have some, some places have a lot, but Nine Mile generally has more.

That's the reason why we call it a special place.

- I've lived in Price, worked in Nine Mile for 40 years.

And I can come out here anytime I want and find a site that I have not seen before.

That's what a day in Nine Mile Canyon is like, If you get out and walk, almost continuous sites, that's how dense it is.

(cheerful music) - So Kayla, what do we know about this site?

- [Liz] Project Discovery Nine Mile Canyon Stewardship Day is an archeology based program for high school students.

Students host a site in the canyon with volunteer professional archeologists and other canyon experts.

Their goal is to raise awareness about threats to ancient art and artifacts here in Nine Mile Canyon and throughout the desert Southwest.

- Looks like a monkey with a bow and arrow shooting a goat.

So Stewardship Day is just a day to raise awareness about the beauties of Nine Mile Canyon.

It allows kids my age, I'm 17, even younger.

I started this when I was 15.

It allows us to grow our passion for archeology.

You can even see below the amazing red elk, there's yellows, and there's kind of bluish grays (indistinct chattering) Ray or pigments around here, even further down the road.

There's like a perfect [Indistinct] elk, like perfect.

Like it's been preserved under this overhang by a river.

It's amazing that it hasn't been washed away.

There's just a persistence.

Everything that is painted or drawn here is to the eye of the beholder.

They could be maps, they could be painted figures.

We have no idea what it means, but it's here and it's beautiful, nonetheless.

And I just want to tell everyone about them, I want to show them that this is out here and we can appreciate it all.

- Many people come here for the experience and part of the experience is having that emotional connection with place.

And I can tell you love it and so your passion rubs off, so don't be afraid to let your passion show.

- I love the site, because it has a little bit of everything that you're gonna see that the Canyon has vandalism.

Petroglyphs, pictographs even has smoke stains right there that we believe to be smoke stains.

From fires that they built back there, so we think it was- And so we think this was a bit...

I hope I can get everybody to enjoy the site.

I want them to see everything they can about it.

- Yeah.

I mean, that should be our goal, is appreciation.

And if people appreciate it, then they might want to get further knowledge.

But if they appreciate it, they'll want to take care of it.

- And look right here, see someone tried to steal this work right here.

- Like, oh, like they tried to cut it out.

- Yeah.

(indistinct chatters) - Yeah that's horrible.

- As you go through this canyon you see a lot of vandalism like either writing, bullets, like people just disrespect it like in the one at Great Hunt people chalked it so they could get a better picture, but that ruins it.

We need to protect these because they're very old and we take advantage of them a little bit, but it's our history and we should protect this.

And it's kind of hard because like we have oils on our fingers and if you touch it, it like degrades the rock surface.

So we have to be careful not to touch.

- Across this site.

You also see numerous examples of vandalism.

For example, here, someone carved their name in and the year when they left it.

It's really despicable to see this kind of vandalism here, because this is such sacred art.

So many things went into this and we can't replenish it.

So we need to preserve it here.

- What's the story, the private property sign cross.

- So the landowner out here in the 60's, he had teenagers and people coming all over his land and he was very, very angry.

He said, I don't want people here.

I should make a point to keep them off.

So he deliberately went right up to that, pictograph painted it and spelled trespassing wrong.

- Wrong.

Put two S in trespass.

(woman laughs) So it's kind of humorous how he made a mistake in writing that, but it's also very sad how he's a ruined the face such an amazing piece of art.

(indistinct chatters) - Some of the things in this Canyon that have really kind of written the pre-history books of this area are pretty incredible.

It's not discoveries like a golden idol or sarcophagus.

We don't find things like that in this area.

But we find complexes.

We find villages where people lived.

In houses and give us real insight into the past when those are found.

- We have here, that, see that little half of a circle.

That's a clay line hearth that would have been their fireplace and their kitchen.

That's where they would have done a lot of cooking.

Well, we can only see part of it because they built this better wall on top of.

(sand sifting) - And basically it's just finding little nuance things that have a few signs that tell me that it looks like a human was working it or used it.

At this site they can also finding these little beads that are black and they're very small and round.

And the pottery here is also gray, just plain gray ware.

- It's the richness of the lives of the people who live here.

That strikes me with awe, every time I come down into this area.

these are things that are as old as any of the masterpieces of art of Europe and in the great galleries of the world.

And it's something that many of us care deeply about and care to protect.

(soft rock music) - Filled with mirages and mystery.

At times Utah's desert landscape can be overwhelming or hard to grasp.

Since 1976, Nancy Holt's land art piece, the Sun Tunnels have beckoned travelers to experience the enchanting beauty that can't be found anywhere else on earth.

(suspenseful music) - The Sun Tunnels were made by Nancy Holt, who was an American artist who was born in 1938.

Nancy Holt first came out to the American west in 1968.

She was completely blown away by the landscape out here in the west.

And just the vastness of this desert.

- [Nancy] I had an overwhelming experience, it was as if my inner landscape and the outer landscape were identical.

You know its like they are one.

and there's like a Nirvana experience.

For three days, I didn't sleep.

I just was euphoric.

And that was really the beginning of my art, really.

And to this day, those are the roots of everything I do.

(calm music) - The work consists of four concrete cylinders that are each 9 ft in diameter and 18 ft long.

And the tunnels align with the sunrise and sunset of the sun on the summer and winter solstices.

(soft rock) The four tunnels also have constellations that are cut out through the tunnel.

And those four constellations are Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn.

(soft music) Nancy Holt rented a studio in Salt Lake City, and she spent about a year living in Utah, creating this work.

She first started creating models and drawings in 73, and the work was completed in 1977.

(soft music) So when you create a work like this, it's out in the middle of the desert in Utah, in order for people to experience it, to spread the story of the work.

Nancy Holt created a number of photographic series and also created a film.

The majority of the film is dedicated to the construction of Sun Tunnels.

Nancy was very much fond of skill and skilled laborers, and she really respected the people that she worked with.

And I think in the film Sun Tunnels, she really wanted to honor that.

To honor the labor that went into creating something like this.

And if you read some of her writing, she talks about how exciting it was to see this transition, when she was working with the pipe manufacturers who pour these concrete culverts, working with them and seeing the shift that took place, where they started to understand and take pride in the work that they were doing.

And it took an incredible amount of planning and forethought to execute work like Sun Tunnels, where you have these four concrete cylinders that are each 22 tons.

She was working with 40 people to collaborate and organize.

For me as an artist, it's really inspiring to see that, to see a work like this that took so much planning and so much forethought and organization.

(plane engine roaring) (soft music) (Nancy indistinct) - [Nancy] to a place they would never have gone to otherwise, you know.

Even local people there do not go out into this particular area.

and they were amazed that I find anything, you know, special about it.

(indistinct) they were built so that I could do the summer solstice celebration.

And I had a chance and I had food and everything, and I invited the local people.

Many of who came.

- This morning, I had the map open and said, where can we go?

Not too far over night.

And I looked in the West Desert and went the Sun Tunnels.

- I think a lot of times people are looking for something that not a lot of people know about it.

That's kind of adventurous and out there, and that's kind of secluded and you know, the little secrets of the land.

And I think this is one of them.

That's something you can come in, and find that a lot of people don't know about something cool to experience.

(soft rock music) - Most years, there's usually between 100 - 200 people.

I think this is my seventh or eighth time being here in the summertime.

And I was out here once for the winter solstice.

- I think it's really amazing about pieces of land art.

Your perspective changes as the light changes.

And so you can't really see them.

They're concrete.

They blend in.

You can't really tell what it is until you get up close and personal.

And so you go on this like great journey.

There's like this great effort to get out to these remote spaces that you just know immediately, why the artists chose to do what they did.

(soft rock) - [Nancy] When you're out in the middle of a desert like that.

There's nothing to refer to.

You know, like there's...

It's very vast, very overwhelming.

And you get dislocated, the sculpture focuses your attention.

(upbeat music) - Nancy Holt was interested in raising questions about the way that we relate to landscape.

How by changing our perception of the landscape, that we might completely shift our relationship with it.

By placing the sun tunnels here, how does it change the way that we understand, where we are on the planet and where we are in the universe?

- [Nancy] Out of the desert is like a long star, you know, like in the vault, over your head.

And so the tunnels repeat that, fact that the sun is shining through the star hole casting spots of light on the tunnels.

And the configuration of stars is actually you're walking on the star.

And then you have a sense of the planet because it's so vast there.

And because maybe you're walking on land, that's never been walked on before.

I mean, that sensation is really exciting.

You have this like sense of time, geologic time.

(soft rock music) - For those, who'd like to take a trip to Mars.

Hanksville Utah might be the next best thing.

The Mars Desert Research Station gives researchers and scientists a glimpse of what life could be like on the red planet, over 33 million miles away.

(soft music) (radio static) - If you're like me, you too have questions about the exploration of the red planet.

Hi.

So we stopped by the Mars Desert Research Station to get answers.

- Come in.

- Thank you.

We're excited.

- So at this part, should I be in a suit too?

Or.

( Liz laughing) - [Liz] These students and researchers from Belgium embark on this once in a lifetime red planet experience for two whole weeks until the next crew arrives.

- I'm a doctor in Econometrics in complex system science.

And I'm the commander of the crew 211.

It's only 50 square meters for the living quarter.

We have to know each other quite well.

- Oh, this is really nice.

Spacious.

- Yeah, It's the only living place, So we are eight.

We sleep just right there.

( Liz laughing) It's a little tight.

It was built this way on purpose.

So the Mars Society could study how scientists work together in close quarters.

- We are able to feel this feeling of confinement that astronauts will it certainly have on Mars.

- So you guys came in through Denver when you drove out here?

What was the moment when you felt like you had left Earth?

- Just after Hanksville, when you get to this little road here.

(laughs) It got amazing to you to go from civilization, to Mars.

(soft music) - When you saw pictures that are taken on Mars and pictures here in Utah, the only difference is about the sky because of the atmosphere, but it is really the same.

The mountains, there are layers of different colors of red.

It's amazing (soft music) On the first day, we went outside when it was night and we just look up at the stars and I've never seen the sky like this before in Belgium it's not possible.

And I'll keep this picture in my head all my life, because it was really amazing.

(soft music) - As I became truly passionate by astronomy and physics.

When I saw that it was possible to do a Mars simulation here, I directly say yes, of course.

(laughs) We have an experiment related to law.

We have an experiment in biology, two experiments in physics, three experiments in engineering.

- [Liz] So, Where are we going to next?

- [Liz] Lets go - Yeah, lets do this.

Once again careful.

- Has anyone fallen?

- Yep.

- Oh!

( Liz laughs) - [Liz] Check out the station's two observatories, one for the moon and the other to look directly at what your mother told you not to, the sun.

- Its amazing, I can put a camera, there.

That can connect to my computer and we can see the sun.

Two days ago, we saw a solar eruption.

Do you want to see the... - Yes, absolutely.

- Do You see, it's like boiling water at the surface.

It's because of the hot and cold gases that go up and down.

So it's really amazing.

- That is so cool.

- Yeah.

- A few steps away.

Hab 3 keeps the entire operation running.

- oh yeah.

(indistinct chatters) (speaking in foreign language) - So, as you can see am like the mother doing a jam cooking a nice meal.

(indistinct chatters) We can see that's going to Mars.

It's not about just engineering.

We need a lot of different people with different expertise.

It's very interesting to have other people working in different fields because they could share the way of thinking about different things.

Science is such a powerful tool.

It is not for some elite.

Some minority, science is for everyone.

- Yeah.

- Here We have a gravity.

We have the Earth atmosphere.

We have the Earth temperature.

So we had to think about it.

So try to find different experiments that we could do here and could be helpful.

Even if we are not on Mars.

- [Liz] Until that day, a few weeks in Hanksville Utah will make do.

(calm ambient music) - Do you feel like you're on Mars right now?

(ambient music) - Oh, there's more to go.

(ambient music) - I'm just going to roll back down.

- As Carl Sagan says, Science is more than a body of knowledge.

It's really a way of thinking.

And I think we have to transmit this way of thinking to everyone.

(soft ambient music) - I have watched these stories at least five times and each time I gained a new perspective and see something that I didn't see before.

You can relive it too, just head to This Is Utah's Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube pages, watch your favorite stories and share them with those you love.

Until next time.

I'm Liz Adeola.

And 'This Is Utah'.

- [Narrator] Support for This Is Utah comes from the Willard L Eccles Foundation, The Lawrence T. and Janet T. Dee Foundation, The Utah Office of Tourism, The George S and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation and the Contributing Members of PBS, Utah.

Thank you.

(soft rock)