Friday, October 19, 2012

Farewell to Utah

The famed Wasatch Front on the east of Salt Lake City
All my life I've lived in the mountains of the American West.  For my adult years thus far I've been cradled, feeling safe and protected, in the high peaks of Utah's Wasatch Front.

Sometimes called the Great Basin (because of its scooped-out round shape) or the Great Smoky Bowl (because the mountains hold the cold air down in the valley in the winter creating a horrible smoggy inversion), Salt Lake City sits in a near-enclosed valley high in the Rocky Mountains.  The Wasatch Front is east of the city and the Oquirrh Mountains are on the west.  Ancient Lake Bonneville once covered the area in water with just the tops of these peaks showing above like islands in a vast sea.  The Great Salt Lake you see on today's map is just a small remnant from that time.  The mountains themselves arose from a combination of volcanic activity, earthquakes and erosion.  Geologically speaking, they were formed quite violently.

Oh, how I'm going to miss these soaring mountains!  And the comfort and security they represent...

I've loved living in Utah and I will miss it so very much but it's time for a new chapter of life to unfold.  And that chapter opens in another place that I can hardly wait to start telling you about!  In just a few days I'll be heading off to my new home:  Kennesaw, Georgia.  These snowy peaks I'm so familiar with will be replaced with softly rolling and very green hills and stories of Mormon pioneers seeking religious freedom with the history contained in civil war battle sites.  Stick with me and share the adventure!