The person you'd like to be...

Whenever S. and I go to southern Utah, she tells me the red rock makes her feel like the person she would like to be.

I have the same reaction to the water of the Puget Sound.  I sit at a Market cafe (my favorite is the Sound View) and my eyes lift up and over the water.  I can hear the seagulls and I can smell the fish from the market.  I feel like someone who is reflective, someone who has the confidence to take a few moments to think about things and contemplate a new idea.  That ever-present push to be someplace else goes away.  I am someone who can take the time to pause for the view or look into store windows, to marvel at a small city park, or take the longer road up the side street just to see where it goes.  It no longer matters so much that everything is on the way to where I need to be, because where I need to be is...right here.

I am not sure if this is the type of person S. becomes when she hits the red rock, but I think it is, or someone very much like it.  I also think this person is not as dependent on place as I once thought.  I become this person when I am near the Puget Sound because it is here that I have always taken the time to be that person.  Since I was 13 and rode the Seattle ferry to Bainbridge in my first outings by myself, to the time I'd take as a grad student to sit in the Market and enjoy the view.  This is the place I have always come to remind myself what it is like to slow down and think, savor, recollect, and enjoy.

The funny thing is, this place could be anywhere, including my own home, if I work to endow it with that same sense of importance, the same reverence and gratitude that I reserve for this place.  Shouldn't our homes be the place we become the person we'd like to be?  Even in Utah...especially in Utah...being able to sit and gaze at Ben Lomond or Mt. Ogden, which can be done from nearly every block in the city.  Letting that vast mountain take your eyes up and over, giving you that sense of calm that you are the type of person who can take a moment to think, to contemplate, and to go out of your way to see something new in your home town.

Much of these thoughts, I think, come from reading Wallace Stegner and his appreciation for all things in the West.  An eloquent essay on Capitol Reef will be followed by an equally thoughtful and moving piece on Salt Lake City.  And you suddenly realize that the only difference between your house and a national park is that you live there.

Some people would love to have a houseboat in Seattle.  Some of those same people would probably love to have a house in the Utah mountains.

Aren't I the lucky one?