Hiking

Hiking has been looming large in my life as of late. I think I'll get one of those topo maps of the mountains surrounding Salt Lake. That way I can stick a pin in all the trails I'm coming to recognize. It will take me decades to explore even half of them.
The one thing I have learned about the local hiking trails is that they make me lonesome for southern Utah.
I didn't expect to miss it so much. I don't think I even really liked living there. But each morning I wake up listening for coyotes and if I'm up early enough, looking for stars. I miss the cat piss smell of the desert after a rain. I miss the thick grainy dust you could grind in your teeth, all red and sandy. Here dust is ugly grey. Its someone else's dirt. I miss the mud so thick it would suck your shoes off if you tried to cross it. I miss lightening storms and the smell of rain drifting across the desert with a lushness of cool. I miss the sudden smell of alfalfa and sound of farming sprinklers. I miss livestock. I miss the way they smell and especially they way they sound. I miss the clank of bells and chewing and lowing. I miss the call of peacocks. I miss the whine of a lone truck on the highway. I miss the hiking in the coolness of a pine forest. I miss the knee high grass of mountain meadows and sponginess of unexpected waterways. I almost never hear the hum of insects any more.

There is too much of everything in a city. There's too much money and noise and dirt. Theres too much demanding my time.
I love it here to, though. Against all odds I'm finding myself a part of this valley filled with strangers. I chat with the woman in the grocery store about the heavenly scent of ripe fresh tomatoes. I know the clerk at my local gas station. The faces in my neighborhood are familiar, if not well known. I like that. Sometimes, in the country, people get to know you too well. Actually I don't believe that. I don't think people can get to know each other too well. But in the city, it seems, people are more forgiving. There is so much more that requires patience, if not attention. Lines are longer, traffic is bigger, you don't even know the name of your mailman.

When I was growing up I wanted to get as far away from southern Utah as possible. I wanted to go somewhere where people did important things. I wanted to mingle with people like me, or like I thought I was. I thought a lot more of myself than there turned out to be.

Now all I really want is to go home. I want to live out on the road to the dump or something like it in a little desert town. I want the mountains and creeks and canyons and coolness to be 20 minutes away. I don't mind if the only grocery store in town closes at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night and isn't open at all on Sunday. I want to hear crickets and domestic geese and chickens. I want to hear coyotes call on a lonely evening and see jack rabbits fly across the road in front of my car. I want big hunks of red sandstone stained black with weather to lay down on when the sun is high in a pale blue sky. I want wood to chop and garden hoses gushing well water to grow my tomatoes. I want a clothesline so I can dry my clothes in all that beauty and then wear it on my back.