The mountains are just RIGHT THERE….
I’m pretty sure that I’ve shared this observation in the past, probably when I was living up there…
…but one of the things I admired about living in (and now visiting) Salt Lake City is that the mountains are just…right there!
They are such a presence…such an ever thing up there…turn your head and there they are!
Winter Clouds over Mountains
It has been several years since I have had the opportunity to behold the beauty of a snow-blanketed plain with mountains in the background and a serendipitous flock of clouds overhead.
Somewhere north of Scipio and south of Nephi, Utah, a northbound roadside view looking east from the side of I-15, heading home for the holiday.
The Road Home
The image in the rear-view mirror caught my attention while heading north for the holiday…an impromptu stop along the highway captured a new memory affirming photograph of home.
Looking south along I-15, somewhere between here and there in Middle Utah.
Dog Lake…and Lakes Mary, Martha, and Catherine
These aren’t necessarily from the archives proper, but the photos are from a little while ago. August of last year found me visiting my Utah kids and then visiting the mountains and canyons south and east of Salt Lake City. You might remember that I lived there for a few years…a few years ago now…and that I spent most weekends hiking in those nearby Wasatch Mountains.
Of the many hikes that I took while living in Utah, I never went to the lakes that I am presenting in this post. They are situated in the conjoined space at the far eastern end of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. In fact, one can walk up to the lakes from the Big Cottonwood side, at the Brighton ski resort, and continue on the trail back down to the Alta ski resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon, or vice versa.
I didn’t visit the lakes for the precise reason that I described above…their proximity to potentially great quantities of people. To give a small example of how many people one might encounter there, let me say that there were five vehicles, including mine, when I arrived in the parking lot at 5:55 am, and over 50 when I returned to my truck at 10:30 am…and that was on a Monday morning in the middle of summer. When I lived there, I hiked on weekend mornings…so I avoided the place…in hopes of avoiding the above mentioned “great quantities of people.”
I didn’t study a map of the mountains before leaving for the hike, so I was a little surprised that I would encounter Dog Lake on the near approach to Lake Mary. The little body of water in the second photo is Dog Lake. There is another Dog Lake in Millcreek Canyon, just north of Big Cottonwood Canyon…and back when I used to study my mountain map of the area, I knew of both of these Dog Lakes…but had forgotten about this one. You might remember a black and white rendition of the above photo….
The photo below is from the close approach to Lake Mary…just a little ways further into the mountains from Dog Lake. As you can see the concrete wall in this image, you can tell that this is actually a reservoir, not a true lake.
Not that it matters much, what we call it…especially when we get up to the mountain-reflecting body of water and look out over it….
I had a sense of being home again when I was out on the trail heading up to the lakes…off in the mountains…very few people around…the smells of mountain earth, forest, flowers, grasses, and maybe even the water…all of it flooding my head…rejuvenating the muscle-memories and the actual physical sense of “being” in those surroundings.
I would have to confess then, too, that my body also knew it was only visiting, that it had been existing in the desert at maybe 1,200 feet in elevation…and that it was now hiking from over 8,700 feet up to 9,200 feet…and I felt that difference in my lack of wind and the need to “pull over” every now and then to catch my breath…heart pounding as it was rejoicing….
You can see the top of the reservoir wall in the below image.
There were three or four people sitting around Lake Mary and their voices carried loudly over the water and in the thinner air, so I made my few photographs and then headed back up the trail…up a little further to Lake Martha.
The bluebells were in a huge clump, almost like a grove, actually, if that’s possible…a rather large swath of near boggy forest floor that was covered in great, dark green leaves of some familiar plant whose name I didn’t know…with pink sparks of Indian paintbrush…and then almost purple gray smudges of what became bluebells as I got closer.
Life in passing…in waiting…in anticipation….
Between Lakes Martha and Catherine, there is a something like a minor cirque on the south side of the trail…it rather resembled an amphitheater…an almost bowl-like depression in the ground like some huge something had reached down and scooped out a chunk of earth and then littered the ground with grass and wildflowers and pine cones and rock litter from the hills above….
I sat in the grass and flowers for several minutes with my elbows propped on my knees, making photo after photo of the flowers…with my head and heart lost in the present and the past and wanting to stay there…right there…for fucking ever.
Anyway….
The bowl of Lake Catherine from the left…
…the middle…
…and the right….
This little guy has a bite of my chocolate brownie Cliff’s bar in his hands….
Now heading away from the lake…
Encountering another little squirrel-person eating what he’s supposed to eat…and appearing more fit and trim for doing so….
Lake Mary from above….
Yes…my favorite flower, ever…the Colorado Columbine in its various opening stages.
Below…red, white, and blue Wasatch Mountain wildflowers.
And the trail back down from Lake Mary with its patch of near hedge-like accompaniment of yellow flowers…and the forest beyond….
Thank you for enduring the longer post…for going home again with me to my beloved Wasatch Mountains…even if it was only for a few minutes. If you enjoyed the hike even half as much as I did, I know you absolutely loved it.
mountain home
while in the salt lake valley for the family event and celebration that I mentioned in the last post, i found myself standing in a restaurant parking lot with camera facing east
i heard a young female voice to my left saying “excuse me sir…what are you taking a picture of…?
“is there a bird up there on a lamp post or something…?”
“i’m taking pictures of the mountains,” i said, “aren’t they beautiful?!”
her response….”you must not be from around here”
Twin Peaks from Dimple Dell Trail
It’s a sad song, but it struck me the other day that I have now been back in Arizona for longer than I had lived in Utah….and this little gem of a photo has been sitting in my “drafts” folder for over five years. This particular day in March of 2013 found me walking the neighborhood trail called, “Dimple Dell,” and gazing eastward at the beautiful mass of rock and earth known generally as the Wasatch Mountains and specifically as Broads Fork Twin Peaks (only the western peak is visible; it’s the one on the right). I had posted other images from the hike…maybe even some that looked very similar to this one…which probably explains why it was sitting in the “drafts” folder for so long.
Anyway, they are always bittersweet and tender moments when I look back and reflect upon what used to be in my backyard…at what was just a few minutes’ driving time from the house. And there it is….
Heading North Again….
Another glimpse of the locale from my trip north in June of this year….
Some of the images may look familiar, as I have already posted similar photos taken from different perspectives.
I will be heading back in a few days…a gift from my children…bringing me to the mountains…since they can’t come to me.
Fall in the Wasatch Mountains is awaiting…
…like granddaughters’ arms…to embrace me.
A Glimpse at Bells Canyon’s Upper Falls
After my daughter and I hiked to the lower falls, as featured in this post, we continued up the trail for about another hour and then arrived at the upper falls. Amid the spray and the treacherous footing on the soaked boulders and ground, it was difficult to manage another angle that would have provided a better or more clear perspective or presentation of this natural water-feature.
We stood in literal awe for several minutes, shifted our positions to gain different perspectives, stayed there again for several more minutes, and then retreated a bit into the woods that we had just come through to approach the falls.
You can still see the falling water through the trees to the right and behind my daughter in the above photo, so you can probably imagine how loud it must have been to be so close. There was a pervasive serenity, sitting there in the woods, even with the roaring of the falls as near as they were…with the crashing water on the granite boulders and then the rushing of the stream in front of us….
White patches up in the trees caught my eye….
What a refreshing spray after the steep hike to get there…melted snow…living water….
Just a little further downstream is a bridge that has been chained to the trees on both sides of the bank to prevent the rising and rushing stream from carrying it away. There is a trail that you can take off into the shoulder-high brush that will lead you in a near circular manner out and up to the area just upstream from the top of the falls…and will also eventually lead you to the upper reservoir and beyond.
If you’d like to see an image of the falls later in the season, you can click here to see what they looked like in August of 2013.
Thistle…in isolation
The day had been long and filled with the concerns and wonders of traveling from the desert to that mountain place…stiff legs wanted to stretch…confined body wanted release…and the heart wanted to burst with joy at returning to a place that had been branded as “home” in its core.
Old Doors and New
I was at first stunned by the clarity of the image and then by what I noticed when I actually looked at the keys and what they meant, what they were and are in their time. This is my wife’s key-ring and keys…and most of the keys belong to locks that she no longer opens…some of them no longer exist, literally, and others might still be there, somehwere, in a city and a time from not-so-long-ago, but because of the context of her life, and mine and ours, there is no reason to possess them, for they will no longer be used for anything…other than to add mass to her key-ring…or to open doors to memories of that other life in that other place where things were familiar and made sense, before they became what they are to her now, and then. But there are new keys, too, new keys to open new doors with new possibilities…and new memories….
This New Place Called “Home”
In contemplating this wondrous place, I thought of the many things that might be the same or different from the places I’ve been before, the places where I’ve lived and dreamed, stumbled into happiness or fought against raging rivers of sadness or woe, where I considered the options when evaluating mistakes and misfortunes, wrong turns and stupid decisions and thoughtless acts…I pondered those places of hearth and home, those comforting domiciles, living arrangements, quarters, and other stopping places along the way where my life has become what it was and is, those sundry places filled with memories of tender smiles and belly-laughs from little ones and big alike, where that first picture of that first three-month-old has become several walls and picture-walls of photos and portraits and captured moments of these and our many lives, where the echoes of celebrations and sounds of sadness mix and mingle like tasty and alluring aromas from the kitchens of our minds where peace and harmony become one with the rest of life and cause us to know that it’s going to be ok, whatever comes, because we have each other and we live and love and that’s what matters.
I also thought about the view on my way home from work yesterday as I looked eastward toward the mountains and couldn’t find them because of the foggy inversion substance that covered the sky, that blocked-out in its whiteness anything that might be beyond some hundreds of yards. I looked up and out to where the mountains used to be and found the blanket of white extending to the gone place, so I looked higher to where they could be and found them there, yes, above the mist of commerce and progress and upside-down air-streams. I found that the milky white yielded in the up-above to allow a vision from a different world where other planets exist just beyond our reach and where sister moons adorn the heavens in their orbit above us. These and my mountain tops were revealed in their peachy glow from the setting sun, through that vapor below; they were their own white and rocky selves sitting and suspended in the white nothingness, hanging there rich and immense and like little else that has existed in my life. Mountains have been there, yes, in childhood and young adulthood alike, but many years ago and rarely with the immediacy and full presence as these are in their heights and wonder.
This place has become a mix of many things and an absence of others. We are two families from one that now live together and see each other in a constant weekend visit and continuous marvel that it is so. There are many dishes in the sink and different foods in the fridge, four (or three) cars in the driveway and many pairs of shoes about. Tiny footsteps mix with older foot-stomps and dog toes and nails and slippered feet that slide and move about the dark wood floors and lead us and each other around the chilled and warmed and windowed house that is home with its ice-cold tap water and scalding hot, hot water that is there immediately to warm icy fingers and digs deep into the muscles and bones in a morning shower or “hot bath” that soothes a certain trembling soul. The holidays brought a pan or pot of desert cacti to bless the shared home office of a little one and his mom, calming a sad memory of a place that was and is in the used to be, a place that jumped onto the TV screen as we watched Forrest run-ning, that deserted and desert-ed place that somehow pulled on the heart-strings of that same cactus-loving little one, tarnishing an otherwise happy few hours…as life is life and sometimes sadly borne…but happy now on the following morning as he watches his cars racing through an animated image of the same place and then, his joy speaking loudly in the quiet house, full of glee and happiness, and that’s how it is right now.
I dreamed the other night of my return to that former place, plugged-in and along-side those who used to be in my charge. We laughed at how little I remembered and knew, marveled at how slow my fingers had become in typing into the screen those letters and numbers and words that would send help on its way. They thought it was funny that I had returned, funny that I was with them and there again, and funny that I was down from the pod, that elevated place where commands were given, where eyes watched and ears listened to the goings-on from the phones and radios and people who worked them and do. It was funny and light and strangely comforting, and when I awoke I wondered at what had happened to make it so. There was a big empty space between what happened and then, no indication as to what had caused the return from here to there, from this life to that life, from these mountains to that desert-place, and from now to then. It was a dream, of course, but from whence did it come, which part of my psyche spoke loudest in that sleeping place…hope or despair…longing and sadness, expectation of what might come…or simply missing that and those in the familiar? I know where my heart is, but it has many places within it, many places that are touched and can be touched by those other loved and loving ones who live in this tender place, this home in home, this wondrous surround that is marked by adjustment, realignment, compromise, the unknown, and hope.
That precious one, my precious one, told me the other day, that two times in that day, not once but twice, she felt that she was home. She felt that the rooms were hers and this place in its place was what she wanted and where she wanted to be; it was an emotion and sensation that was fleeting and strange, yet welcome to her mourning soul, her saddened spirit, that longing heart that wanted to return to that former place in that earlier time, that place where the place was comforting and dear, even in its discomfort and un-ease, simply and only because it was that home-place and familiar, that spot in her physical existence where she had been for so long that it was natural and right to belong and long to be there…even though she had wanted to leave for so many reasons, so many reasons that are still real and valid and real and important and immediate and then, yes, and conflicted in emotion and want, desiring the place and the time of the past for what it held, while wanting the place and time of the present and future for the hope that it holds, for the hope that it holds. She said that, then, my precious one.
So this new place called Home is and is becoming that sacred place and sanctuary, that harbor in the storm of life where we lash ourselves to the docks of security while we replenish our supplies of strength and endurance for what lies ahead, those things that come without our bidding and assail us so, and bind us tighter to those we know and love and with whom we weather those storms when back out on those seas and tempest tossed…and here we are…in this new place called Home.
Dos Viejitos
I happened upon two viejitos today. A former gangster in knee length “Dickies,” also wearing his telltale sweat-rimmed straw hat. A rock pipe was recently put away and the cigarette in his nervous hand twisted and rolled with a life not its own. Surging varicosed veins edged nearer the outside of his moreno skin. “Ay, bueno Senor. Estoy buscando a un hombre que se llama ‘Jessie.” Una persona me dice que El vive aqui. Conoce el Senor Jesse? Es Usted, no?” My source had been right as rain, jellied as jam. And correct. Then came his friend, Victoria, la otra querida de la pacienta original. She shares needles and sex with the original patient, Sylvia. The two, lovers and needle partners times seven years, also take their wares into town to sell on the street. Anything to get that extra bit of rock or heroin. Anything. Stifle life and ruin hope. Cease the smile. Encourage no light thought. It is gone. Recapture love and affection. Effect. Affect. El otro Viejo fue en un otro lugar, hablando con una Negrita, si, una prostituta, con quien el tuvo sexo anoche. This man was much darker-skinned than the other and wore the style of clothes often seen on an older Mexican man living in this country – dark tan work-pants and a shirt of matching color. Bare-footed, he followed me into the yard where we could talk out of ear-shot of the young, black woman sitting on the couch in his “living-room.” Proudly displaying the lengthwise scar in the center of his chest and the other scar that divided his right calf, the old man denied suffering from any malady other than the ones which had delivered his proud scars. He, too, lived exactly where Sylvia had told me that he could be found. In the projects behind the Edgewater Apartments, “It’s right there off the road, number twenty, and it has a black screen door covering the regular one. You can’t miss it.” And, so, I didn’t. I found his hovel, his nest, which smelled like unwashed hair and cigarettes. I found his home. Home. Where the heart is. Sweet home. The place like no other, adorned in reflection of the lives therein, or gone.
What Does It Mean That We’re Friends?
Really, what does it mean that you and I are friends, or you and anybody else, or me and the same or different anybody else? What does it mean? Does it mean that we happened to be in the same class together and thought the same joke was funny and laughed at the same time, and then we laughed again, or rolled our eyes at the same thing later in the day or week or semester or whatever? Does it mean that we started working at the same place on the same day or within the same week and formed something like a ‘traumatic bond’ after enduring the same experiences as ‘the new guys?’ Does it mean that we just happened to find ourselves in the same circumstances and discovered something similar in each other that we liked and have taken that something similar and made it grow by talking, sharing, and otherwise finding more and more similar things that we liked, enjoyed, disliked, or hated? We found some commonality and enjoyed it in the other person…something like that? Maybe it’s indistinct…maybe it just happened; we don’t know when, but it did. Maybe it’s like what author James Boswell said – “We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.” It just happened.
And then it starts to grow…that germinal moment or instance of something similar begins to grow in our sharing and time together. Not only do we share experiences, but as time wears on, maybe we share emotions and dreams, hopes and disappointments. Maybe our lives become more similar as we spend more time together and our experiences become shared, and our thoughts become shared, and our emotions, our reactions, our wants, dreams, likes and dislikes, and finally our spirits…our spirits that join somehow in the sharing of those many things and others. We begin to possess such similar thoughts that we can finish each other’s sentences and ideas for the other…our homes might become more familiar to each other, our cars, our children’s backpacks, and our coffee mugs…we are becoming, or have become part of each other. If we’re females, older girls or women, maybe our monthly cycles have even adjusted to the same schedule…and consequently, we’re impatient at the same time, sad, bloated, hungry, not hungry, intolerant, more emotional…or none of those things, but in sync with each other nonetheless. If we’re males, maybe we experience something similar with our biological rhythms the same way women do with their cycles, maybe.
What if we’re different? What if it was the things that were not the same that brought us together, what if they were our opposite characteristics? Some people say that opposites attract…people of different backgrounds and circumstances or personality traits, finding themselves together, whatever the event or situation, may feel a drawing together that is based on sharing what they don’t have in common. People who are suddenly working elbow to elbow, brainstorming on projects, plans, or whatever, their differences pique an interest in the other and they begin sharing and sharing…and maybe even finding things in common that weren’t at first apparent…and friendship blooms. Their differences become complementary, not ‘complimentary,’ as in “Hey, I like your shoes,” but ‘complementary,’ in that one’s strength enhances what might be a weakness or emptiness in the other…like in the movie Jerry Maguire, “you complete me.” The one makes the other a whole person…they are or become what the other was missing in their life…in friendship or love.
So what does it mean that we’re friends? We’ve already become friends and now we are friends, still, after all we’ve been through…whatever that can and/or might be. As Aristotle suggested, have we become two bodies sharing one soul…or two seeds of the same or different types of plants that came to grow in the same spot of earth…two hearts growing as one? In our backyard, we have a fan palm and a date palm that have been growing together in the same pot for upwards of 15 years. I obtained the date palm from a friend’s back yard and put it in a container with dirt from the friend’s yard and brought it home and placed it in my yard and watered it and kind of ‘forgot’ about it. The plant was in the spray-range of one of the sprinklers, so it got the water it needed and continued to grow without much effort or assistance from me. There was a fan palm seed in the dirt from my friend’s yard that sprouted and began to grow in the pot that the date palm was in…and it’s been so many years and I never separated the plants…they grew larger than the plastic pot, split its sides and bored their roots into the ground, joining, intertwining…becoming one living rooted mass with their trunks and branches upwards of 15 and 20 feet in height. To separate them would likely kill or severely damage at least one or both of them…they are two distinct plants but share an intricately woven root system…like people who have been friends for a long time…or brothers, sisters, lovers, spouses, mates…maybe…. These people’s lives have become enmeshed, intertwined, and/or overlapping…maybe they really have become one. Or…maybe our friendships haven’t become this involved and serve different purposes and fulfill other needs.
Some of our friendships can be and are more compartmentalized, as they exist in particular places or arenas of our lives and not in others, either intentionally or because that’s just the way they’ve existed…so far anyway. They are enriching and sustaining in specific contexts and don’t overlap with the other areas, except where they permeate our thoughts or people the stories we share. We might have friends who are family members, our children or parents, maybe; friends of other family members, like our children’s or parents’ friends; work friends that are co-workers, or subordinates, or even our boss, or none of these; gym friends; child-hood friends; military or war-buddies; college friends who were classmates or professors; chess-playing friends from the internet or the city park; blogging friends or writing-group friends; dog-park friends; grocery-store friends; next-door-neighbor friends; and soft-ball or bowling-team friends, or racquetball friends. Some of these relationships can be or might be more intimate or close than others and some might extend from one realm into another as they become closer and more involved in the whole of their lives…work friends become family friends – or even family members, gym friends become girl-friends, wives, and mothers of our children, next-door-neighbor friends might become family friends and in-laws… and then some of our child-hood or college friends might become the best friends in our long lives. An old professor and friendly acquaintance of mine once explained that people sometimes enter our lives for a while and then go away just as freely or casually as they entered them. These friends or significant people join our paths for a time, share wonderful events and experiences with us, learn and grow together, and then slowly fade apart…and then they go away – the relationship doesn’t end badly, it just ends, inexplicably…somehow. They add flavor to our lives for a season, as we do to theirs, and then we each go our separate ways. The substance of the friendship didn’t have to be enduring, and it wasn’t.
For those relationships that are more than temporal, that last through the ages in their varied contexts, what makes them do so? What is the substance, the basis, the explainable part of why we’re friends? As I mentioned above, is it because we endured a hardship together, were baptized by the same fire, got our sea-legs together, fell into a carpool together, started class at the same time…and whatever else…and began to share of ourselves, finding pleasant similarities or intriguing differences along the way? And now that we’re friends – again – what does that mean? I think it means that we probably trust each other, look forward to seeing each other, miss each other when one is away, help each other in random or specific ways, use each other as a sounding-board, feel free enough to vent our deepest angers and frustrations, help each other in times of crisis, cry on each other’s shoulders, celebrate in joy at the successes, encourage each other in the challenging times, admonish each other when we’re out of line, we accept each other to the point that our differences are as binding to each other as are our similarities; they have become part of the glue that keeps us together, we cause each other to think about things we wouldn’t normally be concerned with, force each other’s minds to consider other perspectives, validate the other’s concerns, we mean it with the entirety of our souls when we say “I’ve got your back,” and with everything that entails. We depend on each other and we take each other for granted sometimes too and we understand the other’s manner of speaking and we’re comfortable being silent together and we can share a glance or moment of eye contact and understand the words that don’t need to be spoken and we can touch the other’s hand or offer an easy hug or handshake and those moments of contact are dear and speak from the soul, from me to you and then.
When we say that we are friends – you and I, or you and anybody else, or me and the same or different anybody else, it means that we have connected somehow, in some context or another, and that we enjoy and want to nurture and maintain that connection, that relationship – that friendship…somehow it enriches our lives…or completes us.
Scott's Place...Images and Words 