360 Degree Horizon

I am sorry to report to my Eastern family and friends. I’ve become a Westerner. It’s been slowly coming over me and I had one of those epiphanies as I was driving home from a lovely weekend with my two oldest children in Logan, Utah yesterday.

I first came to the west by transferring to Brigham Young University. Some of the obvious downers to Easterners of living in Utah/Idaho and most of the arid west are: paucity of trees, dry, dry air that leaves your lips and hands husk like, and sage everywhere and don’t forget: trying to keep a lawn green is a total joke.

Slowly, slowly, I’ve come to love these open places. People are open too in this land, and I’ve let go of most of my eastern paranoia. Each time I drive to Utah from my home in Boise, I forget how huge the mountains are. The Wasatch front is right in your face. Granite mountains with sheer cliffs decorated with a smattering of sage and scrub oak. The mountains are less conspicuous in Boise because the foothills hide they’re grandiosity. As well, this city of trees, can play make believe as if it were not in the middle of a high mountain desert.

Traveling to Utah in the most efficient way from Boise requires driving a 94 mile segment of freeway between Burley, Idaho and Tremonton, Utah. This lonely portion of the trip winds through high mountains and open range land. It often feels as though I am sailing on an ocean of dried grasses. Because of its terrain, this area is continually bombarded with severe weather. Often there are mountain passes which are laden with thick ice and snow and can be quite treacherous. It has been rare that I’ve driven this section of road without experiencing some form of precipitation and the wind continually howls. After the farmers have plowed their dry farms, dust-devils reach to the sky and swirl through fields threatening to topple some unaware driver. This area is known for zero-visibility dust and snow storms. I have dreaded driving this road occupied only with long-haul truck drivers and other motorists trying to cut time off their trips like me. Usually, I obsess about getting across it during daylight.

Over the years a new feeling has come over me as I drive this trip. This fall as I was driving home from dropping my son off in Logan, I chanced to be in the area where I-84 bifurcates to send travelers east to Pocatello as I continue west to my destination just after the sun set. Heading west, the sky was gloriously tinted with all the colors of sunset, but as I turned my head, it blended into green and blue and purples. Clouds looked like islands in a sea of fire. It was glorious; this natural performance lasted for sometime as I chased the sun westward. I was astounded at the view in this area which is uninterrupted by trees or buildings; just a clean line of terrain and sky all around. This type of vista can be seen in the West where open sky is a 360 degree vault of blue. Suddenly, my otherwise irksome trip was turned into magic.

Yesterday as we drove home again from Logan, I hoped I could again see this magnificent performance. We were about a half hour later however. This time the performance showed something altogether different but just as entrancing. As dusk became night, the clear skies became an art student’s exercise of mixing graded shades of hues. Adding successive portions of black, the sky became inkier and more intriguing. Blue and purple above and gold and orange of fields turning into deep but almost glowing greens, I stretched and strained my vision to be able to see until it was completely enfolded into night. I knew then, this is my favorite part of the trip. Sometimes completely devoid of trees, awesome and powerful, I live happily in this western landscape.