I’m going to start off here with two tiny stories.
First tiny story: When our second son was attending Utah State University, one of his professors stopped in the middle of a lecture and said, “I can tell you guys are all from Utah because when you step outside you don’t fall down and DIE WHENEVER YOU LOOK AT THESE AMAZING MOUNTAINS.” He was from New York City, where amazing mountains are not a common feature.
(Author’s note: I just checked in with my son about this story. He said the professor was actually from Chicago. Not New York. And he didn’t talk about students dying. He just said people who grow up here don’t always appreciate our state’s natural beauty. Frankly, I like my version of the story better, but fine. Whatever. I disclose this information just to establish my credibility as a member of the non-fake news media.)
Second tiny story: A few years ago I drove my friend Wendy (who IS from New York City, not Chicago) to Moab. Somewhere between Price and Green River, she went a little slackjaw and said in a voice that can only be described as reverent, “So THIS is the American West.” And, unimpressed with the landscape I’ve seen all my life, I went “Yeah. It is.”
I’ve been thinking about both of these incidents because of an experience I had on Monday with my friend Doni.
OK. I have to interrupt myself to say that everybody needs a Doni in her life. Want someone to plan a trip bicycling across Holland and Belgium? Doni’s your girl. Want someone to plan a trip walking from the East Coast to the West Coast in northern England? Doni’s also your girl. We’ve known each other since we were 13 years old, and I’m lucky to still have her in my life.
Anyway. This time the big adventure was all about ziplining at Sundance, a place I haven’t visited recently, which is strange because I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. In fact, I remember Sundance before Sundance was Sundance. I remember when it was Timp Haven, a mom-and-pop ski resort with a tubing hill, a rope tow, a Poma lift, and a lodge where you could buy thick hot bread slathered with honey butter. We rode the school bus up the canyon and skied there in our lace-up boots, wooden skis and Miller bindings. Those were the days when average Americans could afford the sport.
I was thinking about all these things as I drove up Provo Canyon, when I noticed the sun glinting off the river’s back and wow. The sight of it slapped me wide open. I felt as if I were seeing that familiar river for the very first time.
My sense of wonder only deepened the farther up the canyon I drove. The dappled light. The twisted scrub oaks with their thick serrated leaves. The rough, caramel-colored rocks. The wildflowers beginning to show. By the time I met up with Doni at the Sundance ticket office, I was practically teary.
Yes, I thought. This. This is the American West.
When I was younger, I wanted to be from somewhere else. England, preferably, where people opened their presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning and everybody talked like Hayley Mills.
(Incidentally, I used to tell my second-grade classmates that I was from England, and then I talked to them in a fake British Hayley Mills accent.)
(NOTE TO SECOND-GRADERS: Don’t do this. It’s annoying and it makes everybody hate you.)
So what’s my point? Sometimes it takes years, decades, to realize how much you love the place where you’ve always been.
Here’s to you, Utah.
Ann Cannon can be reached at acannon@sltrib.com or facebook.com/anncannontrib.