Like every sun that rolls at dawn, into the west we all have gone
Two days ago, I did something I've wanted to do for ages: Bicycle from Provo to Heber City, Utah. And with the fall colors at their finest, it was the perfect time to do it. I begin with a due-northerly attack on Mt. Timpanogos. As I rode along Canyon Drive, fruit trees offered their food to me, apples blushing with the same earthy-red cast as the lower mountain ahead in the distance. I had just left the Rock Canyon area, with only some color showing itself in the rivulets of the ragged mountainside, stoic and rocky overall, but with tender autumnal feeling bleeding out in occasional crevices and other faces where water was scarce but sufficient. Up ahead was a burst of color, and in some valleys were carpeted with warm colors, looking just like Appalachia. Twisting, hard, confounding rock layers and soft, bucolic tree layers toppled over one another. On more exposed faces of mountain were an indescribable pallet of colors: dark-lavender, orange, pink, bright green, neon yellow, gold, fuschia, deep green. Changing colors of shrub-carpeted mountainside, spotted with all shades of autumnal trees cheered me on all the way to Provo Dam, where my last lively sight was two men by the spillway below cutting down trees. After the colors faded to grey-scree hills, a teeming rich-blue lake came to view, the only thing sporting color. It extended out for miles it seemed. It was a striking feeling of neutrality and alone-ness juxtaposed with the playful comeradery and worshipful serious joy that filled the colored hills and stately 2-mile-high ski-mountain now in my rear view, mystified in the bright afternoon haze.
(Later that week) The red light reverberated on the hills of Rock Canyon, while Mt. Timpanogos darkly shone in an indiscernible purple and red, interchanging colors from ridge to rivulet, as I descended quick as lightning from the Bonneville shoreline on my Dawes. While speeding at bracing velocity, and as the temple, with its golden angel, passed by my view, I took in all the mountain-scapes, including the southern-most rises, and began to feel tingling in my hands and head, so overcome was I by the sunlight and earth might. Later, I will go hiking by moon night, and look at all of it again from Squaw Peak by morning sight. . .
(Later still) As I entered the grasses of Rock Canyon, still soft with spring, I seemed to enter a sanctuary, with quiet hymns of cicadas and frogs that encouraged pondering and quiet reflection. All this betrayed the gentle soul of a valley encrusted and jagged by rocks and violent strata. After a poor-night sleep made good by the energy of the impending hike and air pouring out cold and clean from the canyon, I took to the trail. Again, the dark conifers stood stately above the tangle of light-colored brush and trees. I took to reading my scriptures in a yellow sacra-dome of birches. The sun's light turned the hills directly ahead bright, bringing out their sun-colored brush-strokes of trees, and it was time to hike out.
I rode the greyhound home, through the grey cold-lands of north-east Utah, the burning yellow hills of northern Colorado, Texas's flat forever-scapes and then rolling hills. It was in this state that I saw the reddest sunrise of my life. It was a sheer, unbroken wall of red. It wasn't crimson, pink, or anything else. It was the pure color red. A song filled my heart before my departure, and lingered as I ventured back home
Two days ago, I did something I've wanted to do for ages: Bicycle from Provo to Heber City, Utah. And with the fall colors at their finest, it was the perfect time to do it. I begin with a due-northerly attack on Mt. Timpanogos. As I rode along Canyon Drive, fruit trees offered their food to me, apples blushing with the same earthy-red cast as the lower mountain ahead in the distance. I had just left the Rock Canyon area, with only some color showing itself in the rivulets of the ragged mountainside, stoic and rocky overall, but with tender autumnal feeling bleeding out in occasional crevices and other faces where water was scarce but sufficient. Up ahead was a burst of color, and in some valleys were carpeted with warm colors, looking just like Appalachia. Twisting, hard, confounding rock layers and soft, bucolic tree layers toppled over one another. On more exposed faces of mountain were an indescribable pallet of colors: dark-lavender, orange, pink, bright green, neon yellow, gold, fuschia, deep green. Changing colors of shrub-carpeted mountainside, spotted with all shades of autumnal trees cheered me on all the way to Provo Dam, where my last lively sight was two men by the spillway below cutting down trees. After the colors faded to grey-scree hills, a teeming rich-blue lake came to view, the only thing sporting color. It extended out for miles it seemed. It was a striking feeling of neutrality and alone-ness juxtaposed with the playful comeradery and worshipful serious joy that filled the colored hills and stately 2-mile-high ski-mountain now in my rear view, mystified in the bright afternoon haze.
(Later that week) The red light reverberated on the hills of Rock Canyon, while Mt. Timpanogos darkly shone in an indiscernible purple and red, interchanging colors from ridge to rivulet, as I descended quick as lightning from the Bonneville shoreline on my Dawes. While speeding at bracing velocity, and as the temple, with its golden angel, passed by my view, I took in all the mountain-scapes, including the southern-most rises, and began to feel tingling in my hands and head, so overcome was I by the sunlight and earth might. Later, I will go hiking by moon night, and look at all of it again from Squaw Peak by morning sight. . .
(Later still) As I entered the grasses of Rock Canyon, still soft with spring, I seemed to enter a sanctuary, with quiet hymns of cicadas and frogs that encouraged pondering and quiet reflection. All this betrayed the gentle soul of a valley encrusted and jagged by rocks and violent strata. After a poor-night sleep made good by the energy of the impending hike and air pouring out cold and clean from the canyon, I took to the trail. Again, the dark conifers stood stately above the tangle of light-colored brush and trees. I took to reading my scriptures in a yellow sacra-dome of birches. The sun's light turned the hills directly ahead bright, bringing out their sun-colored brush-strokes of trees, and it was time to hike out.
I rode the greyhound home, through the grey cold-lands of north-east Utah, the burning yellow hills of northern Colorado, Texas's flat forever-scapes and then rolling hills. It was in this state that I saw the reddest sunrise of my life. It was a sheer, unbroken wall of red. It wasn't crimson, pink, or anything else. It was the pure color red. A song filled my heart before my departure, and lingered as I ventured back home
so many mothers only sons, so many lovers only onceI thought fondly on those emerald hills of my Carolinas. I longed for the fall colors. I did not get to see them. There was a moment nearing the GA/SC border where I realized I was in the hills and pines of home. I was at rest to have as my old companions the sighing cloud, dancing grass, and happy pine.
gone away like all the rest, to find our fortunes in the west
still the fire will always burn, the voice in the heart it cries "return"
those emerald hills, now far away, will haunt us back again someday
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