"Where is home for you?" Part 1

My favorite part of my hometown is not actually part of the city itself, but is rather part of the geography, the part that shapes the weather, the seasons, the horizon. My favorite part of my hometown of Orem, Utah are the mountains. As part of the Rockies, the Cascade mountains border us on the east, effectively creating an easy reference point for directions. As long as I can see the mountains, I know where I am and how to get home. Rocky and uneven, they are pretty sparse when it comes to vegetation. The green haze that eventually appears is our sure sign of spring, and the disappearance of the last bits of snow means that summer is fully underway. When the mountains turn red and orange, we know it's officially autumn, and when the clouds roll in and leave a light dusting of snow on the peaks, winter is on its way. Our compass, seasonal indicator, and constant presence is my favorite part of my hometown.

It's a little bit strange to me that I still think of Orem as my hometown. My family moved thirty minutes north to the city of Draper almost four years ago, but as much as I love our new mountaintop home that overlooks both the Salt Lake and Utah valley, I still tell people I am from Orem. I sometimes say Provo because it is the bigger city (with the bigger university) that more people have heard of, but as anyone who grew up in Orem will tell you, they are two very separate places.

Orem is fairly unremarkable, I suppose. The populations is somewhere around 100,000 and we have a university (recently upgraded from being a state college), three high schools, four junior highs, and about a dozen elementary schools. There are two hospitals, two live theaters,two movie theaters, one public library, and one shopping mall. Not a metropolitan center by any means, but respectable. We mock the Spanish Fork (pronounced "fark") accent just south of us and go forty-five minutes north to Salt Lake for a nice night out. Everyone lives and dies by the BYU football season and almost everything is closed on Sundays. The streets get exponentially more crowded when the high schools let out around 2:30 in the afternoons and our biggest celebration every year is the Summerfest parade and festivities in June. There is a bus system, sort of, but most everyone drives or maybe bikes. Orem was ranked the second best place to raise a family in the United States a few years back, and it's true.

I guess the thing that really sets Orem apart is that at least 80% of its inhabitants belong to the Mormon church, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This means that all of my friends were members of the Church, that we got release time to attend Church seminary as part of our junior high and high school education, that none of us smoked or drank, and that we didn't even start dating until we were 16. We had Church youth activities during week and church on Sundays, and when they turned 19 every one of my guy friends left to serve two-year missions for the Church. And this was the way life was, well, is. When I was growing up, it never would have occurred to me to describe my life in these terms because they were such a part of life in Orem, Utah. I only think to mention them now because I am living far away from that environment and culture, and only now can I see it as being unusual.

I think I reached the point where I'm not sure where else to go with this idea. The question is, "Where is home for you?" and I thought of my hometown. But Orem isn't really "home" for me anymore. It was home---for about fifteen years it was the only home for me. But now it is nostalgic, reminiscent, dear to my heart, and only the place where I grew up.