This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I had never seen a pig in the mountains of Utah until I took a new job building and restoring log cabins — more accurately log mansions. The log castle-like fortress I was renovating had a theme of pigs. There were pigs around every corner of the 5,000-square-foot intricate compound.
At the entrance to the home there is a stone engraved portrait, roughly the size of a Mini Cooper, of a pig smiling on a pair of skis. The people who own this cabin love pigs, and they make that love very apparent. Each day, I walk by the pigs, the pig statues, the pig holding the plate, the pig light switch covers, the pigs carved from wood lounging in the backyard.
At first I thought of the pigs as a ridiculous theme for a mountain vacation home. Why not bears or moose or even squirrels? A pig belongs in the mountains about as much as an unused, massive, energy wasting compound made of imported logs. I will say the decorator has excellent taste in fitting the theme of the wasteful consumer.
The original cabin is a place to seek shelter in a harsh and rugged environment. Cabins are simple, easy to build, easy to heat and constructed from the lumber of the very land they sit on. These cabins were a safe haven for the whiskey-drinking, fist fighting, rugged individualists like Utah's own Matt Warner and Butch Cassidy, who would seek shelter from the law or the weather.
The ruggedness of the modern West can be symbolized by the rancher, a trade where the landowner utilizes his land for its natural worth. Yet the modern cabin in Utah is a symbol of wealth, and now living in the mountains is a luxury. Many of the cabins are made of imported hardwoods and are not quaint in the way of a trapper's cabin. Heating them requires gas, not just a single cast-iron stove. They are excessive and entirely impractical in comparison to the original cabin shelter.
In Southern Utah, the recreation is not skiing, of course, but the issues are similar.
Ranchers and lodge owners battle over the last pieces of land. The lodge owner buys these large plots to make a living from recreation and tourism. Others come and take wild game, and they build a large fancy lodge where their clients can gorge themselves. Conversely, the ranchers want to use the land for their free range cattle and make a living from Utah's natural resources.
There is an issue with second homes or vacation homes in Utah, and it's the fact that so many exist. A recent op-ed in the New York Times notes, "Sales of homes priced at more than $1 million jumped an average 37 percent in 2013's first half from a year earlier to the highest level since 2007."
On the pig cabin's street, there are around 20 other overly large "cabins" that were vacant throughout the summer, fall, and the spring months. This is only on a half-mile stretch of road. The whole mountainside is covered with cabins similar in size to the pig cabin.
They are utilized only in the winter for skiing the "greatest snow on earth," an activity Utah is famous for. This means that for the majority of the year, the large structures sit with their exterior lights and hot tubs running without a soul to enjoy their comforts.
Troy James Knapp, the famous "mountain man" fugitive who outwitted authorities in the southern Utah backcountry for six years, was recently captured in a standoff near a cluster of cabins on a reservoir. His tactics, which he revealed shortly after his arrest, involved traveling from cabin to cabin in the winter months, surviving off the fat of landowners who only use these second homes when the weather is pleasant.
I'm not saying the fugitive's actions can be justified, because oftentimes he would loot and dismantle others' property, but the idea of utilizing another person's resources to survive brings to light an interesting premise. In New Zealand, there are many cabins built in remote areas that are open for any person to use, cost-free. We have these in Utah. They are called yurts, but there is a fee to use them.
I drove past the "pig cabin" on the off-season to see how my work had aged. The home was lit up like a military base. Then I noticed a new pig icon. A pig standing as a human sporting a chef's hat, and beneath the smiling pig chef, the words, "piggin' out."
"Go pig out somewhere else," I thought. But where? Pigs consume anything and everything in front of them, and some people in America do exactly this with their excess of money. But if people like this keep people like me busy through their own wealth, how should I complain?
Matthew Werner is a Salt Lake City resident.