The final approach into Salt Lake City is advertised over the plane's intercom. I rouse from half sleep and look out the window, hoping to see a familiar pattern of lights. There are areas of black interspersed among glittering gridlines...great, dark, irregular splotches without a single candle of illumination...a tell of contoured terrain...unsettled areas of mountain...salt flat...lake shore. Some of the lights ascend to eye level and shine brighter...is that the mine? I recognize the radio towers on Farnsworth Peak, and the Oquirrh Mountains, once a familiar sight from my bedroom window...and now the smokestack at the point of the mountain...the pools of slurry...gray on black, edged in by glaring white spotlights. I peer across the aisle for a view out the opposite window...ah...there's the city!
We're out over the lake now...swirls of gray that I know will present more color at sunrise.
So reads an excerpt from my little sketchbook journal: an entry made while on approach into the Salt Lake Airport...the first time I'd been "home" in three years. The week that followed was filled with adventures of the best kind shared with people (and animals) for whom I care deeply. While planning the visit, I'd hoped to spend every waking minute outside: reveling in the mountains, desert-dry air, starry skies, and all the heart-stoppingly lovely (and immensely quirky) vistas that Utah has to offer.
And with a few notable exceptions (those ever-elusive starry skies) I succeeded...
Over the next few days I'll share a few of those adventures...if only to extend the visit a little longer in my own mind. Maybe it will help me readjust to the flat, wet, buggy, welcome I received upon returning to Ohio...sigh...
Alright...enough of that...Ohio certainly has its charms: fireflies and bluebirds, metro parks and river gorges, the Feve and Black River Cafe...and all my friends (furry and otherwise) at the Oasis Animal Shelter. Comparing Utah to Ohio is like comparing apples to oranges...or maybe brine shrimp to lobster (I myself prefer watching the colorful frills of the Great Salt Lake's most notable aquatic resident to eating a lobster tail...but understand if you feel differently).
In any case, forgive me if I gush a little. I certainly wouldn't be the first.
Alright...enough of that...Ohio certainly has its charms: fireflies and bluebirds, metro parks and river gorges, the Feve and Black River Cafe...and all my friends (furry and otherwise) at the Oasis Animal Shelter. Comparing Utah to Ohio is like comparing apples to oranges...or maybe brine shrimp to lobster (I myself prefer watching the colorful frills of the Great Salt Lake's most notable aquatic resident to eating a lobster tail...but understand if you feel differently).
In any case, forgive me if I gush a little. I certainly wouldn't be the first.
Especially love the double rainbow! It's really a rare sight!
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