A Day At the Beach

by littlesarahbigworld

I have an abiding distrust for people from temperate climates. Los Angeles, San Diego, Hawaii…warm and sunny year-round does something to a person’s character. I’m suspicious of people who don’t experience winter. They don’t know about suffering.

Of course, we are all shaped by our environments. Mountain people, desert people, island people. Where you’re from affects what you do for fun, where you go on vacation, how you spend your free time. For many people, the beach means the ocean, salt water, waves, surfing, and I think it says something about my friends and I that for us the beach means this:

Pineview Reservoir, or “The Dam,” as we called it growing up. A lot of people, especially Salt Lakers, prefer Causey, which is all fine and well, but there’s not much of a beach there. Plus it isn’t filled with childhood memories–sneaking off with Marina to eat the forbidden, bright orange Mac-n-Cheese cheese packet; cousin Addie almost drowning after toddling after me into the water; trying to stay afloat on blow-up rafts with my friends and giggling our little heads off.

And how about how COLD the water always is. That would affect a person’s character, certainly. It’s mountain run-off, after all.

And we are mountain people. People who know winter. People who are outdoors-y without even trying, because it’s there, right in our backyards. So we hike, we canoe, we river raft. We camp, we caravan. We swim in water cold enough to chill your beer in, surrounded by the Wasatch, admiring the light through the cottonwood trees.

 

 

 

What about the place where you grew up makes you the person you are today?