The Mountains, My Father, and Me

So for my writing class we had to write an essay about being in the mountains. Here's the first one I wrote:

I suppose you could say that I am from the mountains. As far back as my memory goes, I have lived in Sandy, Utah perhaps four minutes from the Wasatch Mountains. The architecture of the school I have gone to since I was three is triangular, made to mirror the mountains that overshadow it. I started driving last year, and on Sundays Lorin and I drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon. That is where I learned how to use different gears. The mountains are the way I tell which direction is which. The Wasatch Range is to the East, and the Oquirrh Range is to the West. Too many times I’ve been away from home and not known the directions because of the flat landscape I found myself in.

My family has a cabin high up in the Uintah Mountains. It is an eighty-five minute drive away from our house. It has been around for two hundred years and is Lorin’s favorite place in the world. At dinner when asked what he did that day, he often responds, “I drove up to the cabin and stayed for a few hours. Man is it beautiful up there.” I learned many things at the cabin. I learned to hike, fish, cook, do the dishes by hand, play in the mud, ride an ATV, crash an ATV, drive a car, hitch up a trailer, unload horses from a trailer, mend a fence, divert a stream, start a campfire, roast marshmallows perfectly, put out a fire, spray weeds, identify Indian Paintbrush and Sticky Geraniums, make mint tea from freshly picked mint leaves, look at the stars, spot a deer, but best of all, I learned to ride a horse.

Lorin loves horses. He has always had horses. He even has a few trophies from reigning. When I was just a toddler he would put me in front of him on the saddle and we would go for short rides down the drive way and back. I grew up a little bit and developed enough balance to sit on the horse all by myself. So we would go for longer rides, sometimes hours. He would ride in front, holding on to the lead rope attached to my horse. His grasp on the lead rope loosened over time and I started to ride the horse on my own, carefully following behind him. Then I got a new horse and started to become independent. I rode in front, and my younger horse started to outpace his. I rode on my own for the first time when I was twelve. I promised not to gallop and went on a ride down the road to the Tillitsons and back, maybe ten minutes. Lorin watched me out the kitchen window. Soon after, Lorin stopped riding because his knee went bad. I started saddling up by myself and going on longer rides in the mountains up to rockslides, springs, meadows, and overlooks leaving notes of whereabouts on the kitchen counter. It was a beautiful form of solitude, but I was mostly just excited to be grown up enough to go on my own. Now I miss Lorin when I ride. I think that makes me more grown up than being able to ride by myself.

I miss Lorin when I am in the mountains without him. I think the mountains belong to Lorin. He is a mountain man. Not the kind that wears coonskin caps, eats meat cooked over a campfire, and carries a riffle. The kind that drives a Lexus, collects minerals, owns his own companies, has a closet full of suits, leather shoes, and dress shirts with his initials embroidered on the front pocket, and is happiest in a pair of old jeans, cowboy boots, and a pair of buckskin gloves mending the fence.