What's around the next bend? That's what he writes about

SALT LAKE CITY — Mark Twain famously advised writers to "Write what you know."

Lynn Arave flipped that on its head.

He writes about what he doesn't know.

Ever since he left the Deseret News in 2010, after a 32-year career as a reporter, Arave has turned into one of Utah's most prolific authors. He's had nine books published, with a 10th at the press as we speak. So 10 books in almost as many years, while also fitting in a seven-year part-time stint as director of communications for the city of Layton.

The fuel driving this book-writing splurge is not what you'd think, ergo money. The royalty checks he receives barely pay for his gas (he doesn't report all the miles he travels researching his books on his income taxes, because he doesn't want the IRS questioning him about the difference between a job and a hobby).

All of which matters to Arave, who turned 70 this year, not a whit.

"You don't do it for the money; you don't really make that much," he says, "but to me, what I find out satisfies my curiosity, and it's worth it."

His subject matter — a collection of the quirky, the unconventional, the offbeat, the mysterious, the overlooked and sometimes the completely forgotten — reflects that curiosity.

In books with titles like "Detour Utah," "Unforgettable Utah," "Legends, Lore and True Tales of Utah, "Walking Salt Lake City," and the more pedestrian titled "Great Salt Lake" and "High Uintas Wilderness," Lynn serves up a cornucopia of disparate facts you're not likely to find anywhere else.

Or did you already know that Sir Edmund Hillary once climbed to the top of Kings Peak, Utah's tallest mountain (he did it in 1978 when he was 59 years old, 25 years after he summited Mount Everest) … or that there have been more than 130 Bigfoot sightings in Utah … or that Lagoon Amusement Park has had 27 fatalities since it opened in 1886 ("rest assured," writes Arave, "that statistically you are far more likely to be injured or killed in a car accident on the way to Lagoon") … or that it took more than 38,000 trees to build the 102-mile Lucin Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake … or that there are 46 places named Dry Canyons in Utah — to be found in 24 of the state's 29 counties (Cottonwood Canyon comes in second place for most-duplicated-name at 40).

And that's a mere smattering of the factoids to be found in the more than 1,000 pages that comprise the Arave library.

Arave's book-writing phase was launched upon his departure from the Deseret News. Appropriately, it was an article he'd written for the newspaper that bridged the two careers. He'd written a story about a remote Indian village at the bottom of the Grand Canyon called Supai that is accessible only by hiking, mule or helicopter, i.e. an Arave kind of place.

A writer and publisher read the article and reached out to Arave to see if he'd be interested in writing a book about Salt Lake City, focusing on its unique history and heritage. Arave recruited his Deseret News colleague Ray Boren, also recently retired, to partner on the project, and they wrote "Walking Salt Lake City" in 2012.

From there, there's been no turning back. Boren has contributed to two additional books, while yet another former Deseret News colleague, photographer Ravell Call, has at times joined the team to explore the nooks and crannies of the state.

But for the most part, it's been Arave's insatiable curiosity that has provided the catalyst to keep going. As he writes in the introduction to "Detour Utah:" "Inquisitiveness is the essence of the book before you. We're always wondering: What is on top of that mountain and what is on the other side? Where is that? How did this happen? What is around the next bend? … It is all about the quest."

Being able to access newspaper archives online, a relatively recent development, has made that quest all the more doable.

"The way to time travel is to look at old newspapers," he says. "You're seeing advertisements in real time; you're seeing what they saw back then. A lot of times you find the best stuff when you're not looking for it."

History books, he adds, "only have a fraction of history; even family histories often leave out (valuable) material."

When he finds new tidbits, he adds them to the blog (mysteryofutahhistory.blogspot.com) he has been writing for the past decade.

When the bits and pieces of things he didn't know pile up high enough, he writes another book.

The latest, his 10th, is due to be released next summer as part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series. It's entitled "Wasatch Mountains" and explores the 160-mile stretch of the Rockies that reaches from Mount Nebo on the south to Grace, Idaho, on the north.

Arave style, of course.

"History never ends, it just keeps going," says the author. "There's always plenty of obscure things I'd like to find out about and that I'd like to write about."

Related topics