In Defense of My Land

Our conversation today made me think.





You had hiking through mountain forests.

You had streams and rivers that went on for miles and you caves to crawl through on your stomach.

You had loops of majesty that, even from behind a steering wheel, take my breath away.

You had this landscape to grow and play in and it still amazes me more and more when you guide me through it.

Every drive with you is a discovery of some new beauty I will not take for granted.

I love Utah. It’s not a competition. But don’t dismiss my desert. It’s more than just the sight, it’s the feeling. And it’s what I am still. I am more sand than soil, more jack rabbit and rattle snake than horse and cow.

You don’t know what you are looking at, and maybe, having been raised at the foot of lush giant mountains that change from green to gray to gold to white season by season, you won’t care.

But just above this spot where the photographer must have stood is an empty field cut by a newly paved road.

No. This is what was 8 years ago. Now there is probably a house with a window that sees this view.

The lake is only a small one. It’s man made and stocked.

My grandfather fished in this lake. My uncles drove the family station wagon in to it. I sat on the dock when I was five and he told me about “Puddin’ Tang and Snicklefritz” and fed me the Velveeta cheese he used as bait and both went home smelling like bass. He kept the bass in a pond out back. Grandma just told me when Grandpa died, they had let the bass go back to this lake.

On this spot, above the picture, you could park a car and sit in almost silence. There were no other cars to hear. The sounds were cricket chirps and buzzes. Occasionally, distantly, there was a coyote that wailed. And looking down you could see my town, a place I still can’t separate from my mother in my mind, a place I can’t separate from myself.

The roofs and street lights are orange. They always had been. I remember looking outside from various windows all my life, and at night there was always that calming sea of orange from any view point. My town was under it. No matter where I was, what was happening, I was in the embrace of the orange glow. When we drive the 12 hours you hate, and pull in to town at night, those light are the reason I sigh, “home.”

I have never found a window here that let’s me look across the lights of the whole city.

I knew I would be back to the town when I left it. But it was my last time in that spot, that night, the night before I moved away, came here, and met you.