Timpanogos and Provo Peak: Courtesy of Wikipedia
As I was driving south on the freeway yesterday I was staring at the Wasatch Mountains, deliberately looking above the houses that have been built high up the mountain in the last few years. It was a clear and warm day, the mountains felt very familiar to me. I remembered that when I was younger and lived in California, every time I would travel to Utah to visit my grandparents it was the mountains that gave me the sense of being home. My grandmother's homes were and are a locus amoenus for me but the mountains gave that feeling of familiarity and comfort associated with home.
In California there are places where I would go to watch the sunset or to think and sometimes I would go there just to be silent and listen to the ocean. The mountains of Utah speak to me in familiar but distant voices, but i know Del Cerro Park, Malaga Cove and Redondo Beach intimately. Though I will be further down the coast from them when we move, I plan to drift north from time and visit these places that were so important to me when I was younger. Soon my wife and children will know these places too, and understand me better because of it. Perhaps they too will long for these places once we are gone from California, searching for our new home.
California Images in order: Del Cerro Park, Cliffs Near Malaga Cove, Redondo Beach: Courtesy of Jack Smith (http://picasaweb.google.com/JDewittSmith)
4 comments:
That's it, I'm going to the playa tomorrow with my familia to take some fotos!
Oh, how I miss CA, even if TN is green enough to look like the Garden of Eden.
There's something about the ocean that draws me to it. It was hard to not consider proximity to the sea when deciding on schools.
It's the mountains of Utah that make the memories of my childhood real every time I see them.
What I miss most about California is the ocean. I need some ocean time, I'm glad you're moving there, I'll see the sun set on the water in December, I can't wait.
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