Friday afternoon, a half hour before sunset.
The girls in the BYU Bookstore were awesomely friendly. They kept me lingering at the cash register, when I was buying my merchandise, asking me questions.
'What kind of accent do you think I have?" asked one, a brunette, before turning to help another customer.
"Do I get a hint?" I said, turning to taller blonde who was at my register.
"Canada," she whispered to me with an aside.
When the brunette was done with her customer, she turned back and repeated her question.
"Uh, Kansas?" I asked, purposefully botching it.
That threw her off.
"I'll take that," she said, thinking about it.
I looked at the blonde.
"And you..." I said, as if trying to discern the answer in her thoughts.
"You're from...around here?"
"Yes," she said, delighted.
"Pleasant Grove," she said, mentioning a town up on the other side of Orem.
"I was just playing the odds," I said.
They were intrigued when I told them I was here "just for fun," as they put it.
They understood when I expressed my appreciation for the unique beauty of Provo and the Utah Valley. I told them it was rare in the U.S. for a mountain range to rise so steeply and starkly from the west, instead of from the east.
"That means that the mountains catch the afternoon sun, instead of the morning sun," I told them.
They grow more exquisite as the day wears on, especially covered with snow.
"And here they even make a semicircle, all around you," I said, motioning my arms wide, from one end of my peripheral vision to the other.
Pleasant indeed.
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