Where we come from

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I think that people generally have two feelings about the place they grew up.

That place can become the most wonderful, idyllic place to have grown up. It is a source of perfect childhood memories. No place will ever be able to compare. People who feel this way want nothing more than to get back to where they grew up.

The other option is that the place becomes something to escape from.

For a long time, Utah has been that second type of place for me.

I moved to Utah from California when I was 10. My dad had been serving in the Navy and we had lived some amazing places. I loved my time in the high Sierras. My time in Southern California by the beach.

I resented the move to Utah. And even since then, California took on that idyllic image in my mind. I would tell everyone I was from California. I always planned on moving back there.

Even as I grew, and Utah became where I was "from" and everyone I knew was here, I still, tucked away in my mind, wanted to get away.

Hubster has had the same feelings. He spent his high school years in small-town western Montana. Utah always felt like more of the same.

We have talked for years about how nice it would be to leave, to start over, to get away.

It's funny that it takes the getting away becoming a reality for the place I grew up in to take on that childhood beauty.

I never once appreciated the mountains until I realized I would be leaving them.