At Home in Utah

 Yesterday I had a chance to take a long rambling walk around downtown Salt Lake City. It was chilly with a light coating of snow from the day before. The lingering winter storm clouds were low, revealing only patches of open patches of sky, and only the snowy bottoms of the mountains around the city.

Having been to the city before and having explored it on foot, and having no particular destination I needed to see, I set out bundled up in layers to let my feet take me where they wanted to go. That turned out to be up State Street from the hotel, past a shuttered and fenced-up Carls Jr. with its signage stripped. That seemed like a shutdown victim. Carls Jr never go out of business. 

I walked all the way up State Street along the steepening slope past the old houses on the way to the Capitol. It was interesting to notice the types of construction going. As elsewhere the newest tall shiny buildings are residential. Thirty years ago, there were no residences being built in downtowns. Only office towers were being built. The residences in downtown were modernist structures from the mid century and seemed quaint. Now we have a new crop of residences, taller and more glass-filled, with a postmodern look. I wonder how long this phase will last. Has the tide already turned, as far as what will be built going forward?

During my last trip here seven years ago I had toured the Capitol so I was not interested in going inside. I knew it would be shuttered. Nevertheless it was good exercise to walk all the way up the hill, then up the flights of stairs to the locked doors. About four or five other people were in sight around the building. By the time I made it to the top of the stairs I had the place to myself and could indulge in my favorite hobby of staring at things in the distance.

After I'd had my fill of that, I decided to walk around behind the building and check out the area there, which was a complex of state office buildings. The whole time I was walking that day I didn't wear a mask at all, except when I wanted to cover my face from the cold.

As I came around the side of the Capitol on the ground floor, I peered inside the darkened glass doors as I walked by. As I did so, one of the doors opened and a Utah State Trooper came out wearing a face mask. I realized at that moment that I wasn't wearing one and that maybe I had run afoul of some regulation about being on the Capitol grounds. 

Instead the Trooper glanced quickly in my direction and gave a friendly nod of greeting, then proceeded onward in front of me while tearing off my mask as quickly as possible, with a gesture of impatience. He then proceeded to walk towards his car.

After passing around in back of the Capitol, I passed another building, this one modern in style. I looked inside the dark windows there, reading the signs regarding the closures due to the shutdown. As I was doing that, I was startled by the door opening and man appearing in it, whom I hadn't seen at all because of the reflection on the glass. I wandered again if I'd broken some rule, but instead I was greeted by a question:

"Do you happen to know where the Lieutenant Governor's office is?" the man said, with some hint of exasperation.

I drew a breath and then confessed that I couldn't help in. From that I learned that I somehow belong at the Utah Capitol, or at least people think I do.

Like I said, I love all the States. Utah is no exception. Some people bash the culture here. I don't. I don't feel I have any right to do that.