So Long: Saying 'Good Bye' to the Rockies

I started this a few days ago, as I was mentally playing a slideshow of favorite places I have acquainted with in the past seven years of living in The American West. It was supposed to be just a few words, but it took on a life of its own. Hope you have the patience and the time. Here we are …

If spring makes my heart sing, fall makes my heart be quiet. And listen. Listen to the swoosh of the leaves lazily, unconvincingly floating down from trees towards the eternal grave of the earth. Listen for the rain violently hitting the dusty desert windows, in rage and hunger. Listen for the time to pass, the days to shrink, and the nights to swallow us whole for six more gray months. Fall makes me quiet and makes me listen to my life passing and my time being left behind me. Rear view mirror, but no rear drive. This is my last fall in The Rockies, and it's extra special for this reason.

Even people that know me well might not know this about myself, but I had two dreams amongst the many I grew up with. I told myself that if I ever were to move to America (which I did, with the Good Lord's mercy) I was going to have two experiences: one would be that of living in The South. I wanted the diversity, to be close to that history, to that dialect, to the food, to the sweet and gritty people, to the “Gone with the Wind” days of the past. The second one was that of living in The West. I wanted to roam aimlessly across the plains of The West, listen to the enormous silence of the desert, put roots where the soil was too harsh to harvest, climb the majestic Rockies, and step on the same trails where the white man and The Indians met, where the buffalo roamed and the antelope skittishly but confidently called home. And again, by His grace, I did this, too.

And now it's come to the time when I close this second chapter of my American life. We're saying 'good bye' to The West. My husband wrote (http://aaronkuehn.net/tol/?p=825) about all the reasons why, so I won't go into details. I will just say that there comes a time in everyone's life when things must move on. Naturally and without effort. We must move forward. And this is our forward time.

I will have to say that The West has proven to be everything I was expecting and dreaming about for decades, and at the same time absolutely nothing I was expecting. It's bigger. Larger than life, really. Overwhelming. Much louder and faster than I expected it. Less American Melting Pot and more American Puritanical. It's tough, but this was no surprise. I am convinced now that you need more grit to make it out here than you do in the South. The South welcomes you and patches up your wounds. The West digs the dagger into them deeper and makes you bleed more. Makes you a stronger human, for sure, but a more scarred one. People are colder and more aloof here. Their gaze, lost in the red dirt of the desert, looking for that chimera that might never come; dreaming in an abandoned resignation for a forgiveness that might never come. The West is purging. The South is the absolution.

If I have loved The South like I love my mother and father, if I have loved it like the safe, balmy heaven that I need to rest my body and find comfort in when it is tired and unsettled, I have loved The West like you love a sexy, crazy, abusive, but passionate lover. The temptation is huge, the luring is powerful, the scars deep. I love The West like you love a drug that you cannot quit.

The West is made up of stuff the movies, and the legends are made of, and I got to see it, smell it, taste it with my own senses – a bigger privilege and adventure cannot be possible.

Life has not always been easy for us here, if at all. But we made incredibly beautiful memories in this part of the world. I am beyond words grateful to have been given the opportunity to have lived here for seven years! What was but a dream has been my seven (7!!) year reality now. I have the gray hair and the wrinkles to prove it.

I can firmly say that we made a life here, a life that was very different than the one before, but very good, albeit very tough. We had almost no friends, for the most part. The ones we had left sooner than us. We will remember long, lonely years when we reveled into just being on our own, learning the land, camping alone, hiking in search of the next beautiful corner of The Rockies (and that was always plenty!), and finding each other, stronger and more in love.

There are things I won't miss, for sure: I have never used this many bottles of lotion to keep my skin moist as I have in the past seven years. The dry air, and the harsh mineral waters cut your skin. I probably aged faster because of how quickly and often my skin lost its moisture.

Traffic is insane, at least in the part of the country we're in (Utah Valley). Pollution is incredibly and surprisingly high in lots of Western cities, not just in Utah. It's depressing. Services are mediocre at best.

And then there are the people, again: they never answer calls. Waiters and waitresses never acknowledge a woman is sitting at the table. Employers, at least in Utah, severely underpay women for the same jobs (or harder) than men. As a woman you really don't exist in this state, especially as a childless woman.

I never did understand neighbors here, either: they are not friendly enough to come over for dinner, or invite you over for a bbq, but they do leave stuff you don't need nor ask for at your door in secrecy. I am not sure I'll ever understand that, even if I were to remain here 20 more years.

But warts and all, I am desperately in love with this place, and I will sorely miss it! There is something surreally cathartic about sitting on the porch of a log cabin overlooking The Rockies, and taking in the rocks, the pines, listening to the trickling river, watching the wild creatures come for a sip of water, and hearing the wind sheepishly crawling through the trees. Like I said: like a strong drug you can't quit, I will crave it painfully. I will miss jumping in the car and driving for 10 minutes to stare at a valley from a high peak. I will miss the camping in crisp cold mountain air, the buffalo on the prairie, and the vast lands, with limitless mountain ranges. I will miss having a mountain view from every window in my house. I'll even miss the snow peaks in the middle of June!

There have been hundreds (with no exaggeration) of memories we have made in the past seven years, and I really would like (another dream) to sit down one day and write my Big Fat Western Memoir. But I will mention just some of them here, just in the hope that someone might need some reasons to move up here. Like I said: it started out with just a few thoughts, and it grew into this …

In no particular order, these have been some of my most favorite moments in my seven years of living in The West:

… being able to go on a road trip to Napa Valley and winery hop for our honeymoon. Sipping the best (my husband says) Long Island ice tea on the San Francisco Harbor. Eating at Morimoto's in Napa and experiencing California – every bit of its diversity and noise.

… driving on a whim to Vegas for some world famous cocktails and a show. Tripling my money at the penny machines.

… playing Bingo in Mesquite, NV, and then getting lost in antique stores down there, full of memories of The Western Past, a mixture of Native Indian art and Old Frontier paraphernalia.

… eating at old timey saloons in Park City, Cody, WY, or Jackson Hole. You can smell the stinky leather boots to this day, and trip on the warped wooden floors.

… sipping hot toddies at Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City on New Year's Eve, waiting for the fancy dinner to start at Bambara's and for the fireworks show to begin at midnight.

… eating the best Thai food in America (to date, for us) at Sawadees in Salt Lake, right before going to see Saturday's Voyeur at Salt Lake Acting Company. How we're going to miss that show!

… riding the chairlift at Sundance during a full moon. Coldest summer night you will ever experience! Watching the moose lazily bathing in Silver Lake on Big Cottonwood Canyon, or sipping a cold brew at Solitude on a lazy, Sunday afternoon in July. Just us, the mountains and the tall skies – the Nature's Cathedral just for us.

… we went to this tiny little town of Afton, WY one summer for the weekend. Never in a million years would I have wanted to go there – why Wyoming?! What's in Afton?! But they have some of the best cabins to rent and they have the best trails on the edge of Bridger National Forest – gushing rivers and tall firs, rocks and peace, deafening peace everywhere. And believe it or not, some of the best seafood you find here, in a mom'n'pop store in the middle of downtown.

...lakes are deeper and cleaner here – except for Utah Lake. I do believe that there is a huge monster, maybe a whole family of them, living in Utah Lake that spew out neon waste every hour to give it it's gloomy, dirty, neon glow every other day. Outside of this lake, however, the lakes out here are pristine, cold, crystal clear, and deep.

… although Utah does have some vegetation (Utah has everything, really, landscape-wise, except for the ocean), Colorado and Wyoming definitely won the coniferous lottery. Montana, in the upper North-West, too … I will miss the firs and the pines. I will miss camping at Ponderosa Campground on Nebo Loop and gathering cones right before winter came. They are big and sturdy cones. You dip them in bleach and they make great décor for Christmas.

… wandering the streets of Ketchum, ID, where Hemingway scattered his last steps before he died. Ketchum has the best breakfast potatoes at Bigwood Breakfast Cafe – a sure sign you're in Idaho.

… sampling absinthe in a gourmet store and eating elk chili at the brewery in Jackson Hole, WY. Walking under the elk antler arches in the downtown – nothing says more “wild” and more “West” than that! Afton had the antler arches, too. Or maybe I am wrong: there is at least one thing that says more “wild” than that: wandering in the middle of the desert and running into hungry hawling coyotes and wolves in the middle of the day, or seeing horse, cow, or deer carcasses in almost every hike. Vultures and crows feasting on naked bones in a melting summer mid-day.

...we will probably not run again into many establishments with names that bring ghosts of the past and John Wayne movie memories to mind – places with “wild”, “cowboy”, “lonely”, “ranger”, “Indian”, “saloon”, “claim jumper”, “desert rose”, “one eye”, “buffalo”, “shooter”, “gun” , 'barrel”, “rain(dance)”, “sun(dance)”, “wind”, “last chance”, “trading post” in the name.

… going up the Provo Canyon to Sundance on a whim: whether it was a long weekend, a boring weekend with nothing to do, a dinner craving, a Sunday brunch – we could always rely on Sundance to be there for us. And once we were there, the views, the peace, the chill in the mountain air took all the pains of the everyday life away. Bob (as in Redford), we will miss you!

… going down to Zion or Moab for the weekend and shooting the moon-like desert life for hours. Getting lost in the redness and getting speechless in the face of a nature like no other on Earth. The red rock is as unique as the limestone mountains of Turkey, the jungle of the Amazon, and the vastness of Antarctica. There is nothing like it, nothing compares – it just must be seen with your own eyes to understand. Or to puzzle upon.

… speaking of Moab: if you can only go there once, make sure you eat dinner in the sunset, on the Colorado River at the Red Cliffs Lodge – about 14 miles off the main drag. Leave time and the world behind you and go die for a minute – just you, the mighty Colorado, the red rocks and the sunset. If you still believe that God is bogus, you have no feelings, really …

… getting lost in the desert was still my favorite past time here. Going to Bluff, UT in the winter, when no one is there and there is only one restaurant in town open and one gas station with a cranky host gives new meaning to the words “lonely” and “desert”. You understand why the Navajos are not people of many words in these parts: they don't dare disturb the serenity of nature and God. Their turmoils are internal, just like the riveting life of the desert – all under wraps and in the shadows.

… I will equally miss the salmon supper in Payson, UT – best, largest wild Alaskan salmon cooked on an open fire - and the Indian food at Bombay House in Provo. The people at the Bombay House were the best hosts I have met in my stay here. The friendliest, most efficient, and most passionate about what they do.

… I will miss shooting. Shooting (as in camera) is so easy here: you just point the camera and make sure you have a steady hand. The light is almost always perfect and the landscape is begging to be shot. You can never run out of things to shoot here, but my most special moments were when we chased the buffalo on Antelope Island, on the big Salt Lake, or the birds, frisky with frost, in the deep winter, on Utah Lake. Utah Lake in the sunset goes apey! I will miss shooting sunsets …

… I will miss the skies here, mostly. There are no rainbows I have ever seen anywhere bigger and brighter than here. The sunsets and sunrises are glorious odes to God and to Earth, painted canvases in search for an audience. Such show-offs!

… I have loved all the trips we took from here – from California to Washington State, from Colorado to Nevada, Montana to Arizona. But the one place in my heart that will remain like the ever-burning flame of my life here, and of my memories of The West will be Monument Valley in the heart of the Navajo Reservation. That place, between the buttes, in July, at sunset, is the place where all of the energy of the world and the universe comes for supper. Time truly stands still and is visible, so you can see it sitting down and having dinner, chewing ever so slowly till the sun dips into the red dirt. If I have to take one picture and one picture only from The West with me, snug in my heart and my sinews, it would be that piece of land right there.

… Montana had always been my Mecca. Unlike any other European person that dreams of coming to America for New York and L.A. and Miami, I wanted to come to the US for Montana. The untouched land, the wilderness, the candle-like trees bordering the rocky cliffs – it's all there, and it's what I think about when I think of The Rockies. For a while we thought we might even move there, but alas, altitude got the better of my heart, and we can't anymore, for wanting to live. Glacier National Park was like coming home, finally. Everything I have ever dreamed about and loved about mountains, mountain absolute perfection is achieved there. There is a feeling of reaching an apex, like I felt when climbing the Twin Towers in New York in 1999, of achieving something great when you cross the Continental Divide and stare into the immense valleys below. When you watch olden glaciers melt into water and air right before your eyes. There is also a feeling of smallness and unimportance about yourself, in the grand scheme of things. Montana is all that and so much more.

… when I think of more Old West reminders, I think of every other eating place in downtown Park City, I think of The Lodge at Bryce, Irma Hotel in Cody, WY, The Mahogany Grill in Durango, CO, or The Cowboy Grill at The Red Cliffs Lodge in Moab, UT. You step into any one of them and you're expecting that Buffalo Bill is sitting at the bar, Bourbon in hand.

I know The American West stops at the level of family photo albums as far as history is measured, but it does have its own history and its own character, to be sure, unfound elsewhere in America, I believe. It's a land of cowboys, hunters, law breakers, women who had to either make it on their own or hide between the husband and 10 kids, and maybe even 2 or 3 other wives. If I had a dollar for every time I said “Wow! We really do live in the Wild West” because someone shot a cop, or made their own justice somehow, I would be rich now. History has caught up with these parts, in some ways, but some people still think the gun and the land run supreme, and nothing and no one will stand between them and those sacred treasures!

… some of my favorite time has been spent enjoying the small towns we live in and near-by: going to the rodeo or buying the annual funnel cake at Fiesta Days in Spanish Fork, or going to Park Silly in Park City, or to Oktoberfest in Snowbird. Solitude is such a gem of a resort, and as deep and powerful as the name itself. Pure, crystallized … solitude.

… I will miss the mountain streams skipping step from rock to rock in the spring. Camping on the mountain tops in the fall and hearing the tired, not so full sound of the springs running towards the valleys in rest, waiting for the winter snow and ice to mute them.

… I will miss the sweet tomatoes my rocky, sandy soil yields – sweetest I have ever tasted in this hemisphere, because dryness makes sweet. Same for grapes. Harvesting tomatoes, grapes, pears and cherries was as close as I ever got to being a true Pioneer woman and taming these dry, stubborn, rock-full lands. I never did learn how to make apple pie, neither here, not in The South. I did learn a thing or two about funeral potatoes. It's not any kind of special recipe, really – it's just whatever potato dish you want to bring to a funeral to share. Why not a wedding, or a christening, I have not a clue!

… you get used to driving long roads here, because there is nothing for hundreds of miles but the desert and a few bad barns, leaning on one side. Nothing but beauty and nature, that is. Nothing but wilderness and the almighty sun. But as long as the drives were, I will still miss taking them and being in very different climates, and flora and fauna zones. I will miss planning road trips to places like Lake Tahoe, CA, Yellowstone National Park, Whitefish, MT, Sun Valley, ID, Durango, CO, Vernal, UT.

… the winds in The West are what I underestimated the most. I don't believe the tornadoes of the South will make me wince anymore, after having lived here, where 60 mph gusts are the norm. Especially at my house, at the mouth of the canyon. Winds will always carry me back here, on their swift wings …

There are still places I have not seen and I am kicking myself for not having done so. Would you believe that I still have not see The Grand Canyon, or the Sequoia Forest in California?! Or Yosemite? Or Portland, OR? Or Grand Staircase Escalante? For these and many more, I will be back. That is a promise, health and money not being an issue.

I quiet down now and let the wind take my memories away and scatter them across the plains. I came of another age in this place, both wonderful and mean. I am older, stronger, tougher, and I probably used to being lonely, just me and Aa., more than before. We have grown into a couple here, strong and loving, from the two entities we came here as, when we had barely gotten married. Some say that no toughness is built unless there is loss, and as much as we have gained in these past seven years (us, our love, our marriage, our travels, our many hundreds of thousands of photographs, our lives stronger and more accomplished), we have also lost. We lost jobs, two adorable, amazing kittens, money, even (and not in gambling), health, patience … It made us stronger and it shaped our road from here, so zero regrets and much looking forward to the door that is now opening.

Oh, I could go on for another 10 pages, but I am looking at my count and I am into five of them right now, so I better stop! These are all things that came to mind as I am sitting here, on a windy Tuesday night, all alone, pondering upon the recent past.

It is somewhat poetic that the end of such an adventure comes in the fall for us: it's when my heart gets quiet and can think and reflect on things past, somewhat melancholy, somewhat longing, but always accomplished.

I am already longing for some of the places I stopped to document here, for posterity. As much as my heart is filled with the apprehension of what my next chapter back in my beloved South might bring, it is also filled with the memories and the emotional baggage I have stored in these past seven years.

And speaking of my heart: there will forever be a more organic, more material connection to this place than to any other place in the world: when they took my aorta and my aortic valve out of it last year, you could say that a piece of my heart will forever stay in The West. Quite literally. The West is not for quitters, that's for sure. And we are not that. We're just ready for the next road trip.

So long, Utah, and Montana, and Wyoming, and Colorado, California, Nevada, and Arizona, too … Till next time …