Even though both sides of my family are pioneer stock with a long history in the LDS church (some all the way back to the earliest days with Joseph Smith), none of my grandparents really practiced our religion. My dad’s mom was fairly openly agnostic, and my mom’s parents just didn’t, as far as I know, go to church. I don’t have any idea of how my dad’s dad, who died when my dad was sixteen, felt about religion. I am not judging any of them because if I am certain about one thing in regards to faith, it is this: myriad experiences and emotions influence a person’s religious feelings and decisions. No one really knows the complicated path a person walks through their spiritual landscape, except (somewhat) the person herself.

But coming from that Mormon-in-paper-only sort of background has influenced my spiritual landscape. My dad mostly thought about religion in the way his mother did: it can’t be proved empirically, and look at all these intelligent people who think it’s all bunk. Plus, he really liked coffee. Three or four years before he got sick, he began going to church, but his scepticism continues to play a loop in my brain. My mom went to church by herself while she was growing up, and she was married in the temple to her first husband. But I think that whatever the circumstances were that caused her divorce, something after it broke in her, because for nearly all my growing-up years, we were mostly inactive. I remember a few experiences at church: sitting in the stifling-hot Primary room and not knowing many of the songs everyone else was singing; the time I performed in the road show; the Christmas party we attended and how, when I was running around in the gym with the rest of the little kids, I tripped and fell, but instead of scraping my chin along the wood floor I just tucked and did a neat somersault and landed on my feet (earning the applause of a few adults around me).

I remember the day I was baptized.

But church wasn’t an everyday part of my life. Church was the exception. It wasn’t the place I went to feel close to a supreme being, but a building we drove past on our way to the freeway. An idea that was larger than I could understand, full of hints and innuendos. But I did have my pagan spiritual moments. My happiest childhood moments were the hours I spent in the cornfield that grew behind our yard, wandering around in green shade, watching purple morning glories slowly open in the sun. I know now that the calm, silent peace I felt then came from God.

I’ve been thinking about my spiritual beginnings after reading this post about growing up Mormon at a blog I don’t remember how I discovered. This woman had a typical Mormon upbringing, and as an adult she can continue to draw strenght from it. I read her entry crying, because it is so far from what I grew up with and because of how I continue to fail at providing this experience for my own children. I think about walking around in one’s life with the serene faith her experiences have created for her and I cannot imagine how it might feel. Like taking a slow, pensive walk along a flat, shaded path, maybe.

Growing up almost Mormon is markedly different from growing up really Mormon. It meant puzzlement every first Sunday of the month, when boys would show up at our door and we’d give them money. I was well into my second decade of life before I understood what that was all about. It meant we had one family home evening. Ever. It meant we had silky, oddly-shaped cloth with raw edges and mysterious origins to dust the furniture with. It meant we all had our own scriptures collecting dust on our bookshelves. It meant I grew up never wanting to go to BYU, and thinking it was ridiculous that LDS missionaries have to pay to serve their own missions—shouldn’t the church they were serving support them?  It meant sometimes listening to conference talks in April and October, but usually not. Grocery shopping on Sunday afternoons—and trips to the mall, and to the lake—because it was much less crowded then. It meant wine on the table for Christmas eve dinner. It meant I was the only girl I knew who wore tank tops and bikinis. It meant occasional visits from “home teachers” that left me with a vague impression: stuff was going on around me that I didn’t quite understand.

Sometimes my parents would have a “discussion” about church, and then we’d go for a few Sundays. I knew I was a Mormon, but I didn’t really know what that meant. What little I knew about religion came from the novels I read, but I didn’t know how my religion was different from, say, Laura Ingalls’s.  It meant that after those discussions, there was a vague sense of guilt radiating from my mother, permeating me. There was stuff I was supposed to be doing, but I didn’t know what it was. It meant that there was one specific summer Monday, the day after one of our intermittent church visits, when I sat in our shady back yard, reading my book and listening to the faint shouts and laughter from the kids who lived on the other side of the field, and suddenly had a 10-year-old-sized epiphany: they all went to church together, so maybe if I went to church more they'd ask me to play with them. That day a wound formed in me. Guilt, loneliness, anger, and confusion made it fester. Being almost-Mormon, in the time and place I grew up, meant I would always be on the fringe. Always on the outside.

When I was twelve, my grandpa Fuzz died. After that, my mom returned to her religion with a vengeance. She went back to the temple. She went to church every Sunday and wanted us to come along with her. But for me, it was too late to step into the growing-up-Mormon childhood. It was too late for me to simply embrace the church like I’d been there all my life. And it was too late for me to trust the girls in my young women’s class. My spiritual self, which had for all my years been a sort of conglomerate of wondering but not knowing, of feeling the spirit but not understanding it, had begun to to morph into scar tissue: hard to get through. I didn’t want to sit in church with girls who smiled and talked to me at church but ignored me at school. I didn’t want to be in Sunday classes where everyone but me knew all the answers and I was caught naked, unknowing.

So growing up almost Mormon continued to affect me, even when my mom and younger sister really were Mormon. Even though I went to church, and I knew why we paid fast offerings (even though we never fasted), even though I went to youth conference and watched more conference than I had imagined even existed, I wasn’t really Mormon. And when I got a little bit older, when I started truly to rebel, it was mostly against the foisted-upon-me religion my family mostly claimed. I mocked everything about the church. I sat in cars in the parking lot of church dances, never going inside. I partied because we weren’t supposed to. I wore short skirts because everyone said you shouldn’t. I laughed at the kids who took seminary in high school.

In my current grown-up form, I can look back on my almost Mormon experiences and see the path they led me on. I can see where I was a victim of cruel and narrow-minded people and where it was all in my head. I can see how what I really wanted was just, simply, to belong, and since that couldn’t seem to happen I tried to reject the church before the people in the church could reject me. I know the exact, dramatic moment when my trail diverged and I went a different way, and how my faith is something that is my own, based in what I know and experienced, not in what my parents believe. I can see how my spiritual landscape was formed, and it isn’t a smooth, calm path through dappled shade. It is a landscape full of rises and falls, desolate places and secret, shaded waterfalls. My path has been torturous, quite often, and I still don’t walk easy. I still haven’t achieved that seemingly-easy faith that imbued the blog entry I read this morning.

Because the truth is this. I was always on the fringe. I looked like a Mormon among Mormons, so everyone assumed. I felt like a convert, but no one noticed. I continue to feel like I am on the outside, that I don’t really fit, because I haven’t managed serenity, because I still have doubts and questions, because I still have my rebellious moments. I still hear my dad’s voice, questioning God’s existence. I still have my pagan spiritual joy most intensely when I am in nature, not in church. I still wonder if, had I been better at living my religion earlier on in my life, I might have been blessed with the experiences I still long for but won’t ever manage to have, now that it is too late. I still wonder if I will ever be good enough, or if the consequences of my various rebellions will be that I will continue to be almost-Mormon. I still look at my friends and neighbors who are so much more accomplished than I am at truly living their faith and I know that I am failing at giving my kids their growing up Mormon experience.

I’m still on the fringe.

I know women like the one who wrote that blog post. They aren’t pretending. Their serenity is real. They’ve managed to find a peace that they carry within them no matter what. Their faith, their belief, is something that is inherent to their very natures, a part of who they are, just like the blogger wrote: “Changing my Mormon-ness would be as easy as changing my height to six feet tall.” They aren’t almost-Mormon. They are, through and through. Try as I do, though, I still haven’t achieved that sense of Mormon-ness. It still feels like something I put on. It looks like my skin but sometimes it feels like a tattoo. And I continue through the up-and-down landscape of my spirituality, slowly beginning to accept that maybe I will never achieve it, the growing up Mormon serenity, and that for me the process of trying to rise above being almost-Mormon will be the entire point.

• Our new governor in Utah might be the biggest moron imaginable. A quote from this morning’s paper about the conference on the environment he’s planning: "Utah Gov. Gary Herbert says he will host the first "legitimate" debate about whether humans contribute to global warming later this year." Who needs scientists to hold legitimate discussions on global warming when we’ve got Utah’s govenor coming to the rescue? Good to know someone can make it legitimate. The thing that makes me crazy about this is the continuing "debate." Maybe next we could "debate" whether the world is still round.
• Think my neighbors can hear me grumbling to myself about politics and the environment over the roar if the lawnmower?
• Is it a contradiction to be worrying about the environment while I mow my lawn with a gas-powered mower?
• Even more important: can the neighbors hear me singing over the roar of the mower? (I was listening to old U2 on my MP3 player and cannot resist crooning along, even though my singing "voice" is more of a dog howl. I listened to "In God’s Country" three times in a row.)
• I am a really slow lawn mower
• Wish that blister I got from hiking Rock Canyon didn’t hurt because I don’t dare to go running until it goes away.
• Will I be ready for my next half marathon?
• Must remember to rotate the laundry as soon as I finish the lawn.

Better get off the blog and get that done!

(warning: extremely long post)

A few weeks ago, Kendell and I took the kids on a short Sunday-evening hike. We curved around the south side of Mount Timpanogos into a cool, shady meadow, dotted with a few wildflowers and unexpectedly lush after June's late rains. Timp runs mostly north-south. Its west side---sere, jagged, fierce---is fairly straightforward, a rugged jut of mountain rising from the valley floor. But its east side is something else entirely. Carved from long-melted glaciers, the eastern mass is a series of deep cirques, jumbled next to and upon each other, making their way to the 11,000+-foot summit. That Sunday, though, we were down at the base of the mountain. As we walked along the trail that curves around one of the basins, I spotted a deer. We all admired it, getting closer and closer, walking gingerly along the trail so as not to scare it away. It was nervous, as if it knew something strange was in its vicinity even if it hadn't quite caught our scent yet. Once it did, when we were only fifty or so feet away, it bounded away from us, disappearing up the mountain in great, springing bounds.

Magical as that moment was---the bounding deer in the yellow early-evening glow, the thick green plants and violet wildflowers, the scent of dry dust and damp earth and cool canyon wind---what made it truly memorable was how it seemed to unite the six of us. The current of gentle energy inspired by fresh air and wildlife ran through all of us at once, connecting everyone as surely as if we'd been physically touching. Jake felt it so thoroughly that, after we'd started back down the trail, he turned to me and said "Mom, tell me about some of the hikes your parents took you on when you were a kid." I explained to him that my parents weren't really hikers. In fact, we never went on even one hike.

"Why do you like hiking so much now, if you didn't like it when you were young?" he asked, his face a little bit bewildered at the idea of his tree-hugging mama living in a non-hiking family. I explained that while we didn't hike, my parents still taught me to love nature by taking me out to it. We went on drives in the canyons quite often, and every summer found us at Lake Powell (still one of my favorite places on earth; I think I would chose a vacation there over almost anywhere else, even the beach). But his question kept coming to my mind last Tuesday (the 18th), when Jake, Kendell and I hiked Timp. Just why is it that I love hiking so much?

I think the Timp hike is the perfect hike. It is just long enough. Fifteen miles round trip are just enough to make you feel like you've really hiked that day, but not so long that you have to sleep on the mountain. Plus, the landscape you travel through is absolutely breathtaking. The trail takes you through four distinctly different areas, and each area is itself varied. Piney woods to quakies, marshland to talus, alpine arboretum to high desert garden: it is always changing. The first section, called the Grand Staircase, is a long, narrow valley with a curve at its cliffed top; the trail weaves along the right-hand side of the valley. It's full of trees: pine, aspen, oak. And, everywhere in August, wildflowers. To get on top of that back cliff, you hike a series of switchbacks that has you crossing the same two waterfalls four times each. There aren't bridges over the falls (although there are a couple over long, marshy spots); you just gingerly pick your way across whatever stones are in the shallowest water. The flow is swift and cold, so no moss grows, the stone strangely abrasive, hardly slippery at all.

I've never climbed Timp with Kendell before, because his old hips never would have made it. My previous two ascents were done first with Becky and then with a family friend. Kendell is not a lingering sort of hiker. He doesn't really want to stop and take in the scenery, at least not for more than sixty seconds or so. I really did want to linger once we got to the back cliff, where you can look both down at the valley you've already hiked and then turn to see the next cirque you're approaching. Sixty seconds was hardly long enough. But after some breathing and a little rest, we pushed on.

The next section is officially named Middle Basin. I think whoever named it has got to be the least-imaginative person alive (or probably he's already dead?) because this cirque is incredible; the drab "Middle Basin" hardly does it justice. It's vaguely serpentine, in a wide sort of way, rimmed in pine-topped cliffs. It starts with meadows, lush this time of year. Birds hop out of the brush and scuttle up the trail, which curves away from the cliff, always ascending but at a forgiving sort of angle. Jacob and I had hoped to see moose in the meadows, like we did when we hiked it three years ago, but they weren't there. Just green, shaded quiet. That is the magic of Middle Basin: how peaceful it is, a circle made of forest, pine, emerald, dusty, brilliant, grass, moss, sea, beryl greens. The cliffs are contrast, and the impossible blue sky; the wide northern talus slope a swathe of burnt umber. The trail winds around rises of stone, seems to almost be going away from the talus, but eventually leads you right across it. The sound of stone on stone on stone on stone on sharp-edged stone: not a grinding or a crushing sound, but a finely-honed clatter that works its way through seeming miles of stone to quiver somewhere deep in your spine. Only the trees and flowers know how deep the stone goes and where soil begins. But it must be somewhere, because even in the scree, there are wildflowers.

We stopped for another sixty-second breath in the middle of the talus slope. The sun had finally, barely risen over the far edges of mountain, and the light sparkled with that blue-white clarity that comes in the morning. I'd been leading so far, wanting to go a little bit faster than Jake was comfortable with. After we'd caught our breath, Jake and Kendell went on ahead, because I wanted to take some pictures. I couldn't resist the light. I couldn't resist the flowers. The flowers! That is one of the answers for Jake: I love hiking because it can take me to a place where flowers simply grow, without help from a greenhouse, without sprinklers or fertilizer or pesticide. The trees, too. Everything growing all on its own, without people's help (despite people, really). It brings me a sense of peace to see the world in its natural state; it makes me feel that humanity might not destroy everything beautiful and wild.

The last part of Middle Basin is my favorite part of the hike. The trail arcs along the eastern side of the cirque and is, to me, a fairy-tale landscape, straight out of a Hans Christian Anderson forest. It is just the way I imagined forests to be when I was a fairy-tale reader:

Long grass and towering trees alike catching the sunlight, the trail a zen curve, and the inescapable flowers. Part of me---the part who believed in fairy tales---thinks there might be fairies living in blossoms, elves under toadstools, talking mice sitting at rock tables, a trail of bread crumbs. I think it is those bits of color, scattered among all the green, that turns the place from simply beautiful to ethereal. I'd like to drop down in the spackled shade and relax in the grass, but every few feet another photo presents itself. I took photo after photo, and then pushed on until something else demanded to be caught on film. Until I stopped taking photos because just being there, in seeming solitude, is enough. Meadows rise above me and fall below me, all full of flowers, and I think that maybe my first metaphor is wrong. Maybe it isn't about fairies and their tales. Maybe it is all God's garden. He is the wisest of all gardners, mixing colors with abandon, bringing light pink to shadowy spaces and ultramarine blue to the green parts of the earth. It feels like solace.

It feels sacred.

Alone on the mountain in the flowery fields, I come upon another answer for Jake: because hiking makes me remember what it felt like to believe in fairies and to be that young and trusting and hopeful. That memory brings me along a path to a more grown-up faith. Mountains to me will always be sacred.

I was almost to the south side of Middle Basin before I caught up to Kendell and Jake. Here there are three long switchbacks, and the basin is steep, and it is all a mass of color. Kendell walked behind Jake, and Jake walked behind me; we talked about what we'd seen so far. I gave him some encouragement, because let's face it: we'd already gone more than four miles, and we still had three to go, and that's a long way for anyone, let alone an 11-year-old. I made sure to encourage him to drink, and to get a granola bar from his pack if he needed it, and gave him a shot block. I told him I was proud of him. Just before we left it, I turned around to look at Middle Basin in the morning light and I realized: maybe the guy who named it that didn't lack imagination. Maybe he knew there isn't a word for how it is.

After Middle Basin is Timpanogos Basin. This high cirque is mostly dry meadow, with a few clumps of trees. My previous Timp hikes had been too late in the season for much color to be left, so that there were flowers here, too, took me completely by surprise. But before I could admire much, I had to take care of business:

Hiking with two boys doesn't allow for much compassion for the plight of a woman hiker, but someone had the wisdom (and grueling task) of building a latrine at 8,000-ish feet. It's a fairly disgusting potty; board walls surround three sides, giving you quite the view while you're doing your thing, but even the view couldn't distract from the fact that no one in her right mind would actually sit upon that toilet. Quite the thigh workout while you're praying no one else comes along needing the facilities. Still, though: more gorgeous solitude. I took a moment to take a few more photos and then to just stand, admiring the view (several hundred yards away from the potty, of course, and definitely downwind), before I started up again.

By now Jake and Kendell were ahead of me again, blessing me with another solitary bit of hiking. I only came across two or three other people in the basin; several squirrels, a few birds, too many butterflies to count. Away from the company of trees, the wildflowers in Timpanogos Basin spread out, as if the entire cirque were a field. (In the above photo, you can see the back of the saddle.) The crags of the saddle and summit come into view; the blue sky opens up. Behind you is another vista: Deer Creek reservoir, the little towns of Heber and Midvale, the grey-green Uintas. The lack of trees in the basin helps you see the structure of the mountain, and the basin's lip seems impossibly steep. As I approached the steep ascent, I again step stopping, to photograph the flowers or just to stand and look at things. I could see Kendell and Jake ahead, begininning the ascent, and then I started to rush to catch up with them. I wanted to come up the saddle together. I even ran for a bit, until I met the base of the rise, and then I just pushed as hard as I could. Kendell managed to make the saddle before I did, but only by two minutes.

About eighty percent of the Timp hike is done on the east side. When you crawl out of Timpanogos Basin---legs quivering, lungs shocked out of their comfort zone---you come over the saddle onto the west face. The view there is amazing; both south and north, you can see for miles and miles. We all sat and rested for a good ten minutes or so, taking in the view and eating a bit, because the last section of the trail---saddle to summit---is brutal. You hike along the face of the mountain; the top on your left and a steep fall on your right, and any sense of a gentle rise is gone. (Here, Kendell (in silhouette) and Jake (the tiny white dot) approach the steepest part of the ascent.) In half of a mile you gain 2500 feet in elevation. And, while there were a few flowers on the face, it is mostly a stony path. Just as you've got your breathing rhythm back, you reach a jutting heel of stone that must be navigated. Almost, along this section, you wish there were ropes. The switchbacks are jagged, short, and steep, set like stairs along what is truly the side of a mountain. At the top of that section, you come through a stone doorway, the valley opens up in your view, but the distance that's still left makes it impossible to enjoy.

Every time I've climbed from the saddle to the summit, I have found myself thinking about Sam and Frodo in The Return of The King, fighting the last bit of path up to Mount Doom. I had that scene in my mind, and Jake turned to me and said, "Mom! This reminds me of Sam and Frodo!" and I could almost manage a little, gasping chuckle. Kendell and Jake both kept starting and stopping, which was killing me---I do better if I can just keep going at a steady pace. Finally I told Jake, who was really doing fine, that I couldn't keep stopping. "Stay as close as you can to me," I told him, "and do not get too close to the edge." And then I went. Up and up and up.

My string of solitude had ended, though, at the top. A handful of obnoxious scouts, a few my-age-ish people, one guy writing in his journal (I can relate, but I didn't bring it on this trip). From trailhead to top, I made it in 3 hours 45 minutes. No solitude, but the view:

The thing I love most is how you can see the very root of the mountains, exactly where they start to rise from the valley floor. There's another answer for Jake: I love hiking because it is the only way you can experience some vistas. Experiencing it with that exhausted-with-good-hard-effort feeling makes it even better.

We ate our lunch---nutella and almond butter sandwiches, grapes, and trail mix---at the summit. We talked about the view, and finalized our decision not to go down the snowfield on our way back (everyone we'd talked to, even the park rangers, had said it was icy, and Kendell didn't want to chance a hip accident). We talked and laughed, and then we were silent, just looking and recuperating and being there.

I was nervous about the descent. The other times I’ve hiked, I’ve gone down the snowfield rather than back down that steep edge. (In the next photo, we're going to go DOWN that trail you see along the ridgeline; the X in the middle-ish section is where the trails converge just before you come up the saddle.) But it turned out to be easier than I expected. Of course, I’m also much slower going down a mountain than I am going up. Kendell and Jake kept stopping to wait for me. When we’d made it off the face off the mountain and were just coming to the end of the first switchback, I looked up at the pile of (new! In August!) snow in the hollow, and there were goats just walking down the mountain. There’s a herd of mountain goats on Timp, and I’m certain it was the entire herd we saw. When I noticed them, they were fairly far away from the trail, but they just kept coming down, until they were literally right on the trail. One guy, coming up, had to sort of stamp his feet at them to get them to give him enough room to continue on up. There were baby goats, with anxious mothers, and two male goats that kept ramming each other’s horns. We stayed on the side of the mountain for at least thirty minutes, just watching the goats. I was a little bit nervous about them trying to charge one of us, but it turned out just fine:

(Forgive the shaky filming...my heart was still pumping hard! And I sound like a complete idiot.)

I didn’t even have to point out to Jake that mountain goats are something I love about hiking. Not mountain goats themselves, of course, but the chance of coming upon wildlife. When Jake and I hiked last time, we saw five big moose, nearly right on the trail, and that time we stopped to just watch them, too. It’s not anything like seeing an animal in the zoo. Watching them forage, and run, and interact in the place where they just live is incredible. "Seeing those goats," Jake told me once we started going again, "makes up for how tired I am." That’s always how it is: you pay with exhaustion, but you receive something you couldn’t get any other way.

We had one other notable experience as we went down. Jake, who’d been strong for most of the entire hike, and brimming with endurance on that long saddle-to-summit section, hit the wall with about two miles to go. He was not happy. He didn’t want to keep going. Finally, after trying to encourage him, we stopped to sit on the root of a tree, and I talked to him about how even when things are hard, he has to keep going. Hiking is just like life in that way, and the similarity helps make life’s difficulties themselves a little bit easier to bear. It’s a sort of practice run. Keep hiking even though you’re tired, or keep running despite the blisters, or walking even though your knees ache, or whatever: it helps you build a physical stamina that translates into a spiritual one. I don’t know if he understood what I was saying, but maybe one day, when he’s struggling with something in his life, he’ll remember that moment in the tree roots, and it will help him keep going.

What I have learned from hiking this mountain before is that the hike changes something in you. It's hard to describe; the mountain becomes something other than the landscape of the place you live. Hike it, and you begin to have a sort of relationship with it. Even when you're down in the valley, the connection remains; no matter the weather, I look at Timp from my window, at the route we take to the top, and I wish I were up there. That Tuesday, at the top, I wasn't wishing. I'd brought myself there, a couple of people I love with me. I could almost say it was the best hike I've had, except for I think about the other times I've hiked it and I know it's not about better, but different. It was every single reason I love to hike, spread around the seven-ish hours of hiking.

but will have to because they're not out yet:

The Year of The Flood by Margaret Atwood. Hello. New Atwood? I have been obsessing over this since I learned about it back in March. It's a sort of companion novel to Oryx and Crake , which is a novel I think everyone should read because of the realism in what it posits the future could hold. Aside from being overly excited to read this (I am trying to not get TOO excited because, then, what if I'm disappointed?), I'm feeling slightly obsessed with wondering if her book tour for this one will bring her to Utah. I did get to attend a reading she did for Oryx and Crake, but I made a fool of myself and I forgot a camera. Two mistakes I wouldn't make again if I had another opportunity. Plus, I really, really, REALLY want her to sign my much-marked-up copy of Cat's Eye .

Day After Night by Anita Diamant. I'm not sure she can ever recreate the magic of The Red Tent. But I am hopeful! Tells the story of Jews who fled Europe for Palestine and were retained by the British. . . not a story of the holocaust I had ever heard of before.

Lacuna  by Barbara Kingsolver. I don't even know what it's about but I'm uber-excited anyway. A lacuna is a gap of some sort...hmmmm. Can't wait!

Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon. His Maps and Legends is one of my favorite books about writing/reading. Summerland is maybe the only book about baseball I've ever read and loved (probably because it's not really about baseball, but norse mythology, and courage, and intricate maps). Here, he collects essays (yay! for essays!) about his attempts to be a perfect father, husband, and/or man, both the failures and the successes.

Solace of The Road  by Siobhan Dowd. Siobhan Dowd might just be my favorite YA author. She's nearly perfect for my reading tastes: Irish, lyrical, brave. Unfortunately, she passed away just as she was beginning to find her writerly stride. (Damn cancer.) This book was written before her death (well, obviously) but not published until September.

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt. Byatt's novel Possession is in my top-ten favorites. Her short stories are good, too. I'm annoyed that I really do have to wait to read this one, as it's being released much earlier in England. Not annoyed enough to pay the import fees, but still.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. There's a certain anxiety over reading the second book written by an author whose first book you love. Niffenegger also wrote Time Traveler's Wife , and the concept for that one can't, I don't think, ever be repeated. I'm excited to read her new one, but I also know it will help me understand better if I liked TT'sW because of the writing or because of the story concept. I'd actually like to re-read it before I see the movie, but my mom has my copy. (My mom, by the way, has only just picked up reading. In the past six months or so. I never thought I would ever type the sentence "My mom has my book." I'm proud of her!) 

Catching Fire by Susanne Collins. This is the sequel to The Hunger Games. Since there are currently 68 holds on Catching Fire, and since Jake and Haley and I are all dying to read the second one, I'll just be buying both of them. Then I'll be loaning them out, I believe! Should I start my own hold list?

This is, of course, in addition to the scary books I'll be reading in late September and into October. And my attempts to home school Haley for Honors English credit. (Another lengthy blog post about THAT subject.) And...well, I'll never get around to reading everything I want to read. But a girl can always dream.

What are YOU excited about reading soon?

Kaleb, while swirling in wobbly circles across the driveway:

"This is so much fun! I wish Jake and Nathan were little like me, and had to wait until Tuesday to go to school, and they were just little, so they could go in circles, and be my little best friends."

Sniff.

just because maybe if you try hard enough sarcasm trumps sadness:

1. Last week I cleaned out my closet and discovered that I own 14 black tops. That doesn't count sweaters. The kicker: I know that, the next time I am at a clothing store and faced with the "I love this shirt, but what color should I get?" decision, I will more than likely buy the black one.

What is wrong with me?

2. Check out this totally cool website: www.gnooks.com

walking between waif-like spring in her clingy rayon dresses and fall's red-headed, bohemian strides, she'd be platinum blond, naturally. Summer is the sort of woman whose make-up is always perfect and whose hair is always perfect; whose closet is full of perfect designer clothes in any color she wants. She never leaves the house in sweats and a pony tail. Her house is always clean and there are plenty of fresh foods on her dinner menu. (She does, after all, have all sorts of daylight to work with; she's up at dawn and goes until the sun's exhausted.) She's an expert in mingling at parties because she's confident and funny. She knows exactly what's current, whether you're talking about fitness, diet, fashion, movie stars, or child care. Of course Summer has children. It's part of her perfection. Her kids are well-behaved, albeit a little bit sandy around the edges. She works hard to lull you into overlooking the monotony of her plot. She's tan but not too tan; thin but tone; beautiful but not intimidating.

Summer is a perfect woman.

The fact that she's nothing like me isn't what makes me dislike her; it's all that perfection. It's boring. It's flat; it's too much about appearances and the external. Plus, all that heat: sure, she's warm. But fail to give her the respect she demands, and she'll burn you. She's more dangerous that you think. Sunny days and pleasant evenings, flowers and that fresh-corn scent of mown grass, fireworks and fresh watermelon: my reactions to summer's pleasures each have a slight insecurity. Maybe I'm too unlike her to be completely comfortable in her presence.

Then August comes, and Summer starts to fall apart. The once-fresh skin of leaves begins to wrinkle, the roses seem to have used up all their pigment, and the sun runs out of energy sooner and sooner. Summer's secure grasp on confidence begins to weaken, imperceptibly. She starts to question her never-ending warmth and enthusiasm as the strength of her heat starts to wane. Her mood changes; bright blue, then almost instantly stormy. Suddenly she allows for rain and has the temperament for rainbows. Each day finds her, still blond and perfectly dressed, but with a few straggly seams. Her roots begin to show.

It is in August that I make friends with summer. Perhaps it's because I know my friend autumn will visit soon. More than that: her imperfections make her interesting. Her unpredictability matches my own. Her house starts to clutter---weeds, and spent flowers, and even a few fallen leaves---and I can relate. More and more, her edges darken. Wind seems to inflate her flatness, but really it is that she grows rich on the ends of things. In August, Summer becomes a woman who has had things happen to her, and her end-of-season sadness lets me trust her. In August, Summer stumbles. In August she notices even me. She becomes, by losing and changing and drawing to an end, a woman whose imperfections make her better than she was.

In August, Summer and I get along just fine.

Yesterday, along with 99% of Utah County, I took my boys to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum. (Haley was swimming with her friends.) Apparently I wasn't the only one who couldn't resist the lure of $2 Tuesdays. Despite the crowds, a good time was had by everyone. Kaleb, who'd been there once before with his friend Mason, kept talking excitedly about the sand and the water and the digging in the sand and was thoroughly bored until we finally made it to where the sand is. Jacob, who used to be passionately in love with dinosaurs---when he was barely two, he'd answer "paleontologist" when you asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up---was annoyed at how slowly we worked our way through the museum, not appeased at all by seeing skeletons of stegos and T-rexes.

Maybe only Nathan had a good time.

At least I tried, I suppose. *I*, however, happened to enjoy myself immensely. I love museums of any kind, and once we made it to the sandy, hands-on section where everyone could happily dig, something fortuitous happened: I bumped into an old friend. Hayley and I met in our secondary ed classes; we were the Old Ladies, the only students not in our twenties. We were instant friends. Compadres in arms against grumpy husbands, difficult exes, stupid teachers, and way-too-cheery-and-optimistic (not to mention thin and unwrinkled and non-jaded) fellow students.

That time in my life felt like God was asking me to do something I didn't want to do, for reasons I still don't completely understand (although I know a few of them now), and He was like "OK, I know you'd rather be staying at home with your babies, but you need to do this even though it feels like your heart is being ripped out of your nose, and I'll give you people along the way who will help you." Hayley was one of those people. I'm not sure if I helped her much, but she was an immense blessing to me; she listened to my rants and had a way of calming me down with her practical approach when I got too frantic. After classes we'd stand in the parking lot by our mini vans, talking. She made me feel like I would be OK.

Plus we could laugh together. We could both be snarky as we wanted with each other, or bitter, or frustrated, but one of us would manage to make it into something funny. She taught me exactly how curative laughter is.

The thing with old friends, with old real friends, is that no matter how long it's been since you've seen them last, you can pick up the string of conversation in a second. Hayley and I sat together while her grandkids and my boys dug up fossils, talking just as fast and hard as we had seven years ago in the parking lot. Laughing. And just as she was a timely gift during those school and teaching years, she carried a bit of advice with her that I needed to hear right now.

She's still teaching, and the school year starts for her on Monday. We might not talk again for another year or so. But what a comfort it is to me to know that when I do see her again, we'll pick up where we left off yesterday. Talking and laughing and maybe even swearing just the tiniest bit. Still friends.

Looking back at the different half marathons I’ve run, I can see some small piece of self-knowledge I’ve gained from each of them. Maybe that’s an odd thing to say about running 13.1 miles because it is, on its surface, a sheerly physical experience. Finding the strength to keep your feet moving, worrying about glycogen levels and anaerobic thresholds, pushing your muscles. But dig a little bit deeper—start running yourself—and you discover that it’s an equally mental experience. Not "crazy" mental (well, maybe it’s that, too!), but mental as in: how much longer can I get my mind to coax my body into doing what I want? As in: what do I do with my thoughts during two hours of racing, not to mention the hours of training? As in: how do I believe in my soul that I can do this enough to make my reality be that I can do this? All that mental and physical work combines, in the race, to teach me something about myself. The Snow Canyon half (the first half I’d run—the first race I’d run—in 3+ years) taught me that I don’t have to fear downhills and reminded me that I can trust my body because it’s stronger than I think. At the Provo City half, I learned that I am the only person who can get me through hard times, even though it helps to have people you love cheering you on.

Today I am trying to put into words what I learned at the race I ran on Saturday morning, the Provo Canyon Half. Because, you know, at every half marathon I’ve done, there’s been a moment of disbelief: Just exactly why am I doing this? Generally it comes on the bus, when I realize it’s been going for a long time and I have to run back. Yesterday it happened when I climbed off the bus at 5:27 a.m. at the freezing top of the canyon. It felt simply autumnal all day on Saturday, but Saturday morning, in the blue-black pre-dawn mountains? In shorts? I was freezing. And I had 90 minutes to think about how cold I was. Even the monumentally-long bathroom line ended up not killing much time, since there were 28 or so porta potties, not to mention people climbing hills to pee au naturale. To stay warm, I wandered around the crowds of waiting people, occasionally stopping to stand close enough to a random group that I could absorb some of their body heat but not close enough that they started thinking "who’s this weirdo standing by us?"

As the sky very slowly lightened, changing the fleur-de-lis silhouettes on the tops of the mountains into trees, I thought about the 10k race I ran on July 24 (Pioneer Day here in Utah). I had set a goal for myself to achieve at that race, and I thought I’d achieve it. But I held back a little bit. I’m always afraid, during a race, that I’ll go out too fast at the beginning, and then not have enough energy to finish. But at that 10k, when I had about one-quarter of a mile left, I started running as hard as I could and I found I had a whole wellspring of energy left. I didn’t make my goal time, though—I missed it by four seconds—and I went home thoroughly discouraged with myself. If I had pushed myself a little bit harder, I would have not only accomplished my goal, but run the race even faster than I thought I could.

I let fear hold me back at that 10k, and that’s what I determined not to do, walking around and shivering before the start of my half. I decided that I would push myself as hard as I could. That I wouldn’t hold back—wouldn’t let fear hold me back. That by the end of the race, I would have used up every ounce of energy I had. It took ninety minutes of walking around in the cold, trying to not feel like the world’s biggest loser (since I was the only one there not with a big group of friends)listening to odd bits of conversation, shivering, and thinking for me to realize that maybe it hasn’t been my body that’s kept my speed down, but my mind.

There were so many people at the race that it took me three minutes after the gun went off to even get to the starting line. I started my timer as I went across the line so I could make sure my miles were fast enough to accomplish my goal, and I was off. The thing about races like this one—when everyone starts clumped together in a random group—is that super-fast runners end up right next to really slow ones. There’s a lot of passing during the first mile or so, a lot of running around people and hoping you don’t trip. I even knocked into one girl, completely by accident, and we both almost went down. Luckily she wasn’t grumpy about it; we both laughed and apologized and went on our way. Down the canyon. The first four miles seemed to speed by, although by the third mile I could tell I was starting to get a blister or two. (I need new shoes but didn’t have time to break them in before the race.) I checked my watch at each mile and I was right on target.

At mile six, there was an out-and-back section. I know some runners don’t like out-and-backs, but I love them. The out- part was uphill—a relief from the constant downhill that formed the rest of the race—and honestly: I like the -back part because it lets me see that I’m not the last person. At the end of the out-and-back, a girl crept up behind me, then next to me, then just a little bit ahead. She was a tiny thing, blonde, wearing a pink running shirt. And I thought no way. No way was I going to let her pass me. It wasn’t personal. She just became the thing I wouldn’t let get by me, that I had to run faster than. For almost the rest of the race, she stayed just far enough behind me that I could see her shadow out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I’d start to lag even just a little, her shadow would get closer and that determination would kick in again. I told myself to ignore the blisters (even though it seemed like they got bigger with every step I took; I thought I could almost hear them growing) and the slight ITB twinge I was getting. All that mattered was that her shadow stayed behind me.

I don’t know her name, and I probably wouldn’t recognize her face, but I’m so grateful for that girl. She kept me going, kept me pushing myself, made sure that I didn’t let fear get a hold of me. All the way down the canyon I managed to keep her shadow at the corner of my eye, and at the last mile—a long stretch of hot pavement winding through an electrical power plant and industrial buildings, quite the shock after twelve cool miles through the trees—I found I had enough left to pick up the pace even more, so that my first mile and my last mile were my fastest. She wasn’t in my peripheral eyesight at all. I left her behind.

The last quarter mile of the race was crowded with spectators. I heard someone shout my name—"Amy Sorensen! Keep going!"—but I don’t know who that was. I knew Kendell would be somewhere by the finish line, but I didn’t see him. Just knowing he was there was enough; I ran as hard as I could till the very end. My time—2 hours, 4 minutes, 22 seconds—still isn’t amazingly fast. But it is 12 minutes faster than the last half marathon I ran. And it’s only four minutes, 23 seconds away from my next goal: a half marathon in under two hours. That will be my goal when I run Moab in a few months. While I’m training, I’ll try to run with that same edginess I had yesterday, try to keep pushing myself harder. Because this race taught me: I don’t have to be afraid.

(This is my favorite race photo, EVER. I'm serious. Also: I didn't include a photo of my blisters but HOLY COW. My three middle toes on my left foot are each entirely blistered along the bottom. I've never been hobbled by blisters but these ones? Have hobbled me.)

In an article in the NY Times,

Or maybe it was a gasp of annoyance.

Whatever. After seeing the movie last week, I'm not sure that anyone at Warner Brothers, especially the writers, has actually read any of the books. Maybe none of them are aware that the seventh and final book has been written and published and that they could, you know, read it too? I'm not sure. What I do know is that I had severely mixed feelings about the movie when I left the theater.

In a way, I loved it. I loved seeing Howarts again: the magic, the castle, the characters. I liked the development of Harry and Ginny's relationship, as well as Hermione's and Ron's. I liked that it had a more romantic sort of feel, since that is authentic with the age of the characters. I loved the scene in the underground lake, when Harry and Dumbledore try to get one of Voldemort's horcruxes. I enjoyed watching Malfoy's character and seeing him change from a stock adolescent-bully character to someone more three-dimensional. In fact, I could nearly agree with this excellent reviewthat Janssen told me about.

Except for one thing: they left too many important things out. I was thoroughly annoyed, for example, that Snape just throws out his "I am the half-blood prince" explanation before sprinting off into the darkness; how does he even know that Harry had his old potions book? The other review I read was exactly right; there wasn't enough development of the relationship between Harry and Dumbledore. This matters because at the end of the movie, when Dumbledore dies, it doesn't feel like the tremendous loss to Harry that it did in the books. But it also matters because there are enormous, gaping, huge holes left in the plot that I can't imagine how they'll fill when the Deathly Hallows movies are released. Ginny hides Harry's potion book, for example, in the room of requirement, not Harry, so he doesn't ever see the abandoned tiara that is actually one of the horcruxes. You don't ever see the ring with the broken stone that also has a huge importance in the next part of the story. The memory that Harry sees in the pensieve, explaining Voldemort's origins? Not in the movie, although his genealogy matters in The Deathly Hallows.

I keep going back to my original theory: the Harry Potter people are afraid of the Twilight people. That fear made the movie into something more teen-angsty than it really needed to be, and forced it to lose focus on the important parts of the story. Plus, while the writers don't seem to have read the books, but it's as if they're counting on the fact that you have read them. The plot holes can be filled in by you, the movie-goer, if you've read the books. That, to me, is the biggest failure of any movie that started out as a book. Of course the movie is an adaption of the book, and it is never going to exactly match the story each person read, because we all have so many different associations with words that affect how we imagine things. (The inside of Hagrid's cabin, for example, is, in my head, laid out exactly like my grandparents' apartment was, although with far more rustic accouterments.) I have come to understand that the movie interpretation is always something nearly entirely different than the book was, because it is a different medium with different rules and boundaries. But to leave such glaring gaps in the story is an entirely different thing. The setting, the casting, the character development: all of that was great. But the plot itself? If you hadn't read the books I don't know how it would have made any sense.

A few minutes after the movie ended, Kendell called to ask me if the movie had been good or not. I was initially enthusiastic. "I loved it!" I told him. But even in the post-coital-ish "I loved it!" reaction, I had a hesitation. I think I loved it not so much for the way the movie succeeded at telling a story, but because I loved being back in Harry Potter's world. That sense of being transported somewhere else is pleasant, to say the least. But that speaks more to the power of world-building than it does to how "good" the movie was. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I get.

But that's just my opinion. What's yours?