learning journal 04.09: last one!

I feel that somehow this post needs to be a culmination of my entire learning journal experience; however, I'm not very good at culminations, so this might be a bit anticlimactic. I wanted to continue some of the thoughts I developed in my last post, because I am {still} thinking about place. I wanted to do another creative post incorporating the theme of place in my writing. As far as my project goes, when I'm in London I want to gain experiences in the city that I can write about. I want to allow myself to have as much experience in the city as I can, which will inspire writing, likely writing that is centered on place. Writing with place in mind for personal essays means exploring the self in the context of place, so there will be explorations of the city itself as well as my experiences in the city. Theoretically :)

So here goes:

Burnt Orange and Blue

At the start of the Civil War, leaders of the yet-to-be-annexed state of Utah sent settlers down to Southern Utah on a cotton mission, hoping the growth of cotton would help to achieve their goal of self sufficiency. The endeavor, although eventually abandoned, earned Southern Utah the nickname “Utah’s Dixie.”

I can image the first settlers’ reaction when they came to Southern Utah. Many of them, coming from the lush green countryside of the eastern United States, must have cringed at the sagebrush laden landscape. The rust colored dust, kicked up in the suffocatingly hot breeze, forms dust devils that look like a weak, red-tinted version of a tornado. Unlike a tornado, you probably couldn’t be killed by a dust devil; it doesn’t do much more than blow around more dirt and roll around the dried up tumbleweeds. I hope the settlers didn’t show up in mid-July, when the heat seems to sink down from the sun and rise up from the ground simultaneously, creating the uncomfortable feeling of being inside a waffle iron. Granted, I’ve never been inside a waffle iron, but I can imagine how it would feel.

Despite the unrelenting heat, the settlers would have been impressed by the sweeping vistas of brightly colored rock against skies of unbelievable blue. The rocks are called red by residents and visitors alike; really, their hue is correctly categorized as burnt orange, a fusion of bright orange and brown. I suppose it’s easier to say “red rocks” than “burnt orange rocks” Kind of like it’s easier to say “redhead” instead of “burnt-orange head” (which would also be a more accurate description). The land, previously occupied only by Native Americans, has earned every inch of its ecosystemic category: desert.

When my family first moved to the desert, we house hopped around Southern Utah until we settled in Ivins. Ivins is right outside of St. George and, being much less populated, is more in touch with the desert and lies in the shadow of the big Red Mountain (burnt orange mountain). When my parents purchased our home in Ivins, I was four(ish). Before the initial purchase, my sisters and I were allowed to accompany our parents to “check it out.” I remember peeking my head into the windows, on my tiptoes, seeing not much more than dingy emptiness inside; I explored the overgrown backyard, a veritable wilderness decorated with spiked stickers and worn weeds.

The lonely house, previously vacant, came with unabashed 1970s style, complete with left-over linoleum, assorted colors of carpet (boring brown, sage green, neon orange, and dusted pink), a large backyard that looked like a true desert field, and a gnarled, half dead rosebush planted smack dab in the middle of the front yard. In no time, the six of us (soon to be seven, later to be eight) plus two cats, Calvin and Hobbs, permeated the bare house with activity and Barbie dolls.

Over the years, little by little, the house has been painted, tiled, refurbished, updated, added onto, and landscaped. When I look at the little picture of our house in its original state of desolation and compare it to the home it has become, I can barely see the resemblance. Several times my parents have looked into buying a newer house, but somehow (happily) it has never worked out. Our home has been lived in. Six girls, two dogs, a few birds, a gerbil (who chewed through his cage and got stuck in the corner kitchen cupboard) and who-knows-how-many cats later, it is ours in every sense of the word. And situated conveniently in the middle of the desert, it provided ample entertainment for my girlhood days.

As a girl growing up in the desert, I fondly recall my sisters and I (my mom, even) screaming and standing on chairs as intruding lizards raced through the house. Our cats, well adapted to the environment, didn’t bring us gifts of dead mice on the doorstep like usual tamed felines; instead, to show affection, our domesticated desert housecats brought us lizards. I remember Yoda, our grey tabby, strutting around with a deceased lizard tail hanging limply out of her mouth (so appetizing).

My sisters and I would race through the fields, risking ticks and scratches, and catching horny toads. Horny toads (as we called them) are actually called Horned Lizards; they were slippery fellows, and quite tricky to catch. Once caught, the reptiles would sit annoyed, waiting for us to tire of petting and investigating their scaled and bumpy skin. Their exterior appeared hardened, spiked, tough as a helmet, and able to inflict harm on anyone who touches it. One touch, however, reveals that the lizard’s skin is like a dog whose bark is worse than its bite; the roughened texture is satisfyingly fun to touch.  After letting the lizards scurry off to their sheltered retreats, we would continue to race and frolic under the brilliant sun. The tumbleweeds provided more opportunity for sport, though not much more than desiccated sagebrush shriveled and dehydrated to the point of being a ball of prickled twigs. Ranging in size from a few inches to four feet in circumference, they could serve as soccer balls or high-profile hiding spots; we played carefully with tumbleweeds, because one slip and the offended tumbleweed would bite back with its prickles. After returning home, panting and beat, we would pick the stickers out of our red-dirt stained socks and brush the orangey earth from our play-worn clothes. The oxidation of iron in the dirt makes it burnt orange, but I didn’t know that. All I knew was that it’s nearly impossible to keep white socks white in the desert.

A culmination of childhood memories collected under the Southern Utah sun branded me with an endearing, yet not often expressed attachment to the desert. Last summer, standing on top of a mountain in Zion National Park, I realized what I had always known: there is a part of my soul, epidermis-like in size, that can only be touched by the desert. Located in Southern Utah, Zion contains some of the most stunning, almost unreal, sandstone canyons and cliffs I have ever seen. Castled, imposing cliffs jut out of the ground, towering over and intimidating the surrounding landscape with their majestic display of warm-toned rock. Angels’ Landing, one of the tallest peaks in Zion, affords a sweeping view of the park, as well as the miles of sagebrushed desert beyond. The climb to the top of Angels’ Landing is no easy feat; the two and a half miles to the top appears menacing at best. Determined to tackle the beast, I put my right foot forward on the trail and started up. After I trudged up the seemingly endless switchbacks that make up the first part of the hike, I held fast to the chains anchored in the rock that provide a safe passage up the cliff. Finally, I stood windswept, enchanted, and three feet away from 1500 feet of down, down, down; and I understood. I understood how the sum of prickled sagebrush and dried earth and red rock can be a soul’s perch; I understood how settlers braved the imposing southern heat to settle the wild land; and I understood how this geographical location can be a home for me as it was for them.