THIS IS NOT AN ESCAPE STORY

AT 15, DARLENE STUBBS WALKED AWAY FROM A POLYGAMOUS CULT-THEN DISCOVERED A NEW LIFE AND COMMUNITY THROUGH RUNNING.

- PAIGE KAPTUCH

MAY 2019. THE WOMAN IS HARD TO MISS. HER ANKLE-LENGTH DRESS IS A FLASH OF DEEP maroon against the chalky concrete sidewalk. Her French braid, thick and graying, sags as if trying to pull her down. She has to be miserable, running in the 90-degree heat of a southern Utah summer with a collar buttoned up to her chin, sleeves down to her wrists, in a dress with huge puffy shoulders.

She lumbers up the hill, grimacing as she reaches the top, and then turns and charges back down, the hem of her dress swishing over dirty white Reeboks. At the bottom, she turns around and does it again.

Hill repeats. In a prairie dress.

The old-fashioned uniform is unmistakable. She is a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the FLDS. But running? My previous encounters with fundamentalist Mormons in the area had given me the impression that exercise, much less running alone, isn't something women are supposed to do.

April 2022. The Vermilion Cliffs of Utah's Canaan Mountain Wilderness hang like theater curtains around the town of Hildale. Behind these mountains lies Zion National Park with its hordes of tourists, but on this side it's quiet. No traffic. At 5,000 feet above sea level, it is high desert here and stunningly beautiful-a rural community free of strip malls and traffic lights and sprawl. There is a new grocery store, a new coffee shop, a new brewery, and a grassy park with new playground equipment.

Newly built homes with tidy landscaping are lined up alongside abandoned houses with holes where windows once were-a reminder that this place wasn't always so quiet. Knocked-over concrete walls lie in yards overrun with weeds. Bricked into the chimney of one building is the phrase "Pray and Obey."