Date: 26 November 2022
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
In the heart of Salt Lake City, a historical site has been dug up. Buildings have been removed. All that’s left is a temple and a tree.
When Saffy and I went to see Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, we knew the place was under construction to renovate the building for the square’s namesake.
The Salt Lake City Temple is significant for many reasons. The entire city is built around it. Most streets in the area are named after how far away it is from the building resulting in a grid pattern throughout the county. The building has even greater significance for those that belong to the religion that built it. Their ancestors crossed the country on foot to escape persecution, some had even crossed the ocean. Once they arrived in the valley it took them forty years to build the temple. For over one hundred years the building has stood as a statement of their faith. Every year, millions of people around the world used to visit Temple Square.
The renovation started a few years ago just before the COVID pandemic. It is still projected to take several more years. Most of the square was fenced off for the project with few buildings permitted to the public, which has decreased the tourist appeal. Statues were moved, buildings were demolished, the ground was dug up, and trees were unearthed, except one. At first, Saffy and I didn’t even notice the one living thing behind the construction wall, that is until we started talking to an old man with ‘Elder’ on his name tag.
We found ourselves in a building that was once a hotel but is now a memorial building. “Let me show you something very important to me.” The man with the title Elder led us through the lobby to a side door. He pointed to the tree on the other side of the construction barrier. His grandmother, many decades ago, returned from the “Holy Land” with three saplings. One she donated to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the church that owned Temple Square. The now mighty noble tree was the sapling she gave. Rumor has it, that particular tree only grows in the middle east where his grandmother had gotten it from. Yet, halfway across the world, it thrived into a giant. We asked many of the younger missionaries in the area to confirm the story of the tree. They admitted they didn’t know the full story. They only knew that the tree was important enough to keep preserved from the destruction around it.
At first, Saffy and I considered it a lovely story to collect. However, we took a second look at the site. Buildings that once stood as visitor centers housing hundreds of displays on the church’s history had been removed for the importance of the renovation. The pathways were once decorated with statues of historical figures in this church, both the paths and statues were gone. All that was left was the temple and its tree. A tree that had traveled halfway around the world and had taken more than forty years to mature in a strange land.
Bard Note 
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