Running

Last night I ran, I ran all of three miles, up past Seven Peaks and the old Heritage Mountain Resort. The resort was all boarded up with plywood over the same doors we entered through only a month ago. It's impenetrable now. I'm glad we got in while we still could. I ran the upper loop of the fancy neighborhood where Seven Peaks Golf Course used to be. The houses are all new and nice, but the neighborhood appears rotting, a shambles. None of the homes have lawns or any vegetation at all really. The front yards are all dirt, mud and chunks of rock. Electrical units sticking out of the earth are broken and wires are frayed. Half of the homes are for sale, with stickers and flyers and number-filled posters taped all over the doors and windows. Some homes have Hummers and nice new trucks in the yards. One house up against the mountain has a black metal fence around a playset and basketball hoops. There's concrete, but no greenery, no yard. The end of the property just swoops down into a seemingly forgotten pit of sandy-brown earth. There's an ATV sitting unused at the edge of the property. Boxes and grocery bags and crushed grapefruit scattered the sidewalks. Weeds and thistles grow recklessly, and mounds of dirt create makeshift driveways up into the sloping foothills. To the west there was a gorgeous view of the sun lazily sinking into strips of grey clouds--this was the only redeeming beauty in the whole area, along with the close proximity to the foot of the mountain.

I ran and looked south at the Wasatch, at Mount Nebo and the snow still covering their tops and patterned down their steep sides like they were drawn in stipple. I looked at the setting sun, at the sky. I looked around at the sleeping Seven Peaks area, all lonely up there, just waiting for summertime and flocks of children and parents and teenagers to enjoy the waves and water, the chlorine and snowcones and slides. At the long-dead resort building, boarded up against vandals--though the property just sits there, wasting and decaying like an old barn, starting its third lifeless decade. It'd be better off a canvas for innocent tagging and graffiti, Harry Potter and Humpty Dumpty jokes and drawings. A cavern for pigeons. A refuge for the homeless. Everything's equally substantial, real and beckoning. It pumps my legs a little bit faster. It's all beautiful, the quiet buildings on the hill, the looming white mountains in the distance, the brilliant, darkening sky.

I left the golf course neighborhood, the sad lofty resort, and Seven Peaks behind me, ran back towards our little home closer to the old town, the real heart of the city.

My legs are still tired and sore.