I sit on my porch in a faded sage green wicker sofa, which adorns this cute light brown brick 1940s brick cottage. I hear birds chirping and landscaping on the golf course nearby, I hear the far away sound of I-80 which is oddly busy for an important Utah holiday. The sky is this exotic blue grey, but starkly blue and so typical of the desert sunrise. My little son thinks I-80 sounds like a waterfall, and I close my eyes and think he's right - maybe Niagara Falls - its drone is like white noise. I contrast the difference between desert city life and small, quaint, quintessential Vermont life with rolling green hills and white church spires that I left behind a year ago.
I fell asleep on my front patio last night, drifting off to the sound of my wind chime in the light breeze and the quaking of the young aspen overhead. And of course the distant I-80 waterfall. I felt content. I might have stayed outside all night - the temperature was perfect - but I don't yet have a masculine entity to watch over me in my home - so as I startled at the sound of a critter in the rustling bush nearby, I was reminded of that fact and sulked to bed, anticipating the day I might feel safe to stay outside.
I think I am the first one up in the neighborhood and I'm back out on my beloved tattered second-hand outdoor wicker. Today is Pioneer day in Utah and I rose at dawn to place American Flags in front of seven homes on my corner - a boy scout / church tradition that lines a handful of Salt Lake neighborhoods on certain national holidays and Pioneer Day.
Pioneer day is a celebration of the Mormon pioneers who settled the valley around 1847. It's a day where everything stops for parades and fireworks, pool time and barbecues. It also represents the approximate anniversary my children and I arrived in Utah. We arrived on July 19th, 2014. We remember it was a Saturday evening because we rose early Sunday morning, and in hasty chaos inside the U-Haul trailer parked in the street out front, located semi-wrinkly Sunday clothes to make it to church. It was the day we met the people that would become our closest friends and take us under wing.
Unlike most of the people we are friends with here, I do not have pioneer heritage in my lineage. I am from the northeast and with the exception of one family in the 1800s who traveled to Missouri, then Illinois and back to New York, I can't find anyone who made it to the far west. I realize my children and I are now the pioneers in my family - how fitting that we rolled into Utah just in time to experience Pioneer Day. I am grateful for the 1840s pioneers who tarried across the Great Plains, suffering hunger, death of loved ones, blistered feet and hands for walking the way pulling handcarts, illness, stillborns yet they came together as brothers and sisters and carried each other's burdens to make it all the way. My dear friends are likely descendants of these brave souls who left everything behind, and I feel enormous gratitude to their heritage.
Ciao.
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