How I really feel about the mountains.

Forgive me if on this post I wax a little cheesy. You see, as I was driving home from work today, I almost rear-ended an impossible-to-miss HUGE pickup truck because I was too busy staring at the mountains and the sunset to actually notice that I was supposed to be driving. And then as I tried to focus more on driving than staring at the horizon, my mind wandered again to how much I love the mountains. But I recognize that there are a few of my friends and family out there who might not entirely understand why. And maybe you don't care why. But just in case you are offended by my inclination to love Utah more than any other state in the US, herein lies my explanation.

I moved to Utah in 1994. I was a freshman at BYU. But in order to understand my love for the mountains, you have to go back a few months. A few months before I moved to Utah, I was working in a window factory. For all of the trauma that small towns hold, there is generally a source to the cancer. The cancer itself can never really be cut out, because it invades every aspect of life, but it's source still sits like a brain tumor, impairing function and ensuring the spread of the disease. (I might add that cancer research should be teaching us that healing doesn't always come from rooting out the source of the problem, as has been purported by therapists and researchers for almost all of history, but that is a discussion on atonement and healing reserved entirely for another discussion, and not necessarily blog fodder.) Back to the small town. In my small town the malignant tumor was an extremely visible and astonishingly ugly yellow and brown rose. Most people don't believe the stories that emerge from a place like that, and I don't tell them very often because I don't expect people to believe them. I don't believe them myself sometimes, and yet they stick in my memory the way scotch tape sticks to the fingers of a four year old. The yellow and brown rose was the logo for the factory. I can't say that the tumor was in the building where corporate was housed or in the 7 buildings that actually built windows, I can say that the organization was what contributed to so much misery in the lives of the people that it touched. Don't get me wrong, this town is not unique among small and large towns with factories and only one or two powerful families. It is just that this is the town I experienced, and this town had as its core a window factory. And for the three months before I came to the mountains, I worked in said factory. It was dark and musty and full of sawdust and opression and social posturing by people that had never moved beyond high school. And that was just emotionally. I worked in a place called the "carousel" which sounds pretty, doesn't it? It means I was on the line, pulling freshly primed windows out of ovens and sanding them and spackling them and prepping them to be painted. I worked with a handsy man named Johnny who kept his alcohal in a paper bag underneath the one bench in our area. He was actually the "lead" on our team. There was another man named Larry who was not quite all there (probably the grown product of severe Fetal Alcohal Syndrome) and he would have been a gentle giant were it not for Johnny's influence on his behavior. And my favorite co-worker was Kip. Kip was an immigrant from Laos, who upon discovery that I was studying French, promptly began to speak with me only in French, teach me some Laotian, and tell me his history. He had the equivalent to a Ph.D in engineering. He was brilliant. When the line was moving fast, he was the only one who could keep up, and when the line was moving slow, he was the one who did everything while Johnny and Larry sat on the bench yelling racial slurs and obsenities at him. I was the only girl. I was next on the list, right after Kip, as far as any discrimination went. If Kip was gone or if Johnny got bored, I was the target of the slurs and the obsenities. It's not something I really want to chat about much. It's something that more people in this world experience than ever should. My experience is not particularly unique, it simply is, and it became a part of me and has contributed to the person I have become. You are hearing about it because it pertains to the mountains.

When I got to Utah, my head was still foggy from the paint fumes. But if I know one thing, through fume induced hallucinations and jet-lagged stupors and terrified 17-yr-old emotions, I know the hymns. And the hymn in my mind was #30, verse 3.

We'll find the place which God for us prepared

Far away, in the west.

Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid,
There the Saints will be blessed.

And the only real thing that stuck in my brain as I settled in to my apartment and met new people and pretended to function socially was that line, "where none shall come to hurt or make afraid". And I would leave my dorm in the mornings and see those mountains, and when people would talk about what it must have taken for the pioneers to cross those mountains that phrase rang out in my mind, and it seemed a simple thing. Why did they do it? Wouldn't you? Frankly, with the promise of a safe place ahead, it would be easy to walk over the top of those mountains. I am in no way diminishing the sacrifices made by pioneers, I am telling you that the real trial came before there was the promise of someplace safe. The real pain came before there were mountains to hike over. The mountains were not the trial nor were they an obstacle, they were the blessing. They scream at the Johnny's and the Larry's "You can't touch me here."

That first year at the "Y" was just the beginning. I went back to the town and the factory the next summer. And there was an even deeper contrast to me, between a place that is safe and a place that is terrifying. And when I returned the next year the mountains that were a refuge the year before became home. I have gradually learned about trails for hiking and waterfalls hidden in canyons. I still don't know very many, but will take every opportunity to learn them for the rest of my life. When I left on my mission I took the mountains with me. When I came back for a weekend visit after my mission, I almost didn't return to Minnesota. Once I did return to Utah, it was permanent. Even the past two and a half years in MN were always going to be temporary. It was never about the promise of friendship or the proximity of the choir. It most certainly is not the culture and the quirks. Those things merely play into the business of living as they would in any location. It has everything to do with the mountains.

One parent from my class in MN summed it up nicely for me. I had just announced my transfer back to Utah, and everyone had their opinion to give me. She asked me "why Utah?", and I gave the generic "friends and need a change" response. But she continued, "I have only been there once. We were driving through on our way to CA, but when we got to those mountains, I felt an overwhelming urge to weep. It was the oddest feeling in the world, to be someplace I had never been but at the same time I felt like I was home for the first time in my life."

I actually teared up when she said it, and I asked "Were you on I-80?"

And she said "Yes, just outside of Evanston, but driving into a canyon. I looked at a map to be sure. I can show it to you."

But she didn't need to. Because I know exactly what spot she is talking about.

And I know that it is not always a precise location. In fact, I have done some pretty serious soul-searching about the term "faith to move mountains". I thought for a little while in MN that what I needed was to move the mountains to Minnesota. I never decided if that was figurative, emotional, or literal. Either way, I didn't have enough faith to get them there, so I came back here instead.

When some people have a rough day at work they find solace in their family or in their ice cream or in alcohal. There are those that need rolling green countryside or an open horizon, and there are those that need an ocean and a barbeque grill. Today as I drove home from another two hours wasted at a useless faculty meeting, I found my solace in my mountains. Do what you will, you can't touch me here.