One hour prior to this, I didn't even think we'd still be hiking the summit of Y Mountain. Why do complications always have to occur an hour before? It's a conundrum to me. I can't help but think someone is definitely testing my patience in each of these moments.
This time I think I passed. Why? We had a solid group of people: three guys from our ward, two of my roommates, and three other guy friends. There was enough room for everyone to drive up legally and comfortably to the trailhead. And spoiler alert: we had no casualties the whole trip. I think I'm starting to become a decent hiker, especially now since I actually plan out my supplies and gear.
While I have been on many hikes, I didn't expect this one to be so memorable.
It was a night of light shows!
The first being the sunset. This is something you can and should see everyday. While it's different everyday, this one today was the radiant opening act to what was to come.
To be honest, I had the BEST view in town. First off, Imagine bursts of color radiating from about a 60-mile landscape. We could see from Payson to Salt Lake City. If any of my Ohio friends are reading this, imagine seeing from Stow to Cleveland. Now double that distance. That's the area that it covered! It was truly amazing! The fireworks looked like little bubbles bursting from a lake of lights. Coming from the Stadium of Fire were the loudest and biggest ones. There were also fireworks set off in neighborhoods, on Utah lake, in event arenas, etc.
To our left was a bonfire near Utah Lake, gone terribly wrong. I'm sure the fire started off with a jovial celebration of freedom. In what seemed like moments later, we could hear the sirens and follow the flashing firetrucks down the dirt path. Glancing over every couple of minutes for about 2 hours, you could see the fire slowly dying and until it was just the flashing lights of the firetrucks in the area. The magnificence of such an alarming scenario was watching it pan out from 3,000 feet above.
Posterior to the show was a transient flicker of a lighthouse on Utah lake. Another party of sorts: a humble welcoming party for incoming sailors. It was something hardly noticeable amongst a land and sky filled with light.
The best light shows came from looking out and up. Out in the distance, God seemed to be celebrating too with red and white lightning. And the sky is a darkish blue too, right? But seriously, the lightning was red. There must have been some chemical in the clouds that reflected reddish purple hues. Horizontal streaks, simultaneous streaks, and consecutive streak were conducted in the sky like a beautiful orchestra performance. The other man-made lights could hardly compete with the brilliance from this ethereal show.
The finale was the quite glimmer of familiar stars filled the sky above. These stayed with us as we packed up from a night of brilliant lights, and traveled down the dark mountainside to our cars.
At one point, Brent in our group read parts of the Declaration of Independence amidst the radiant backdrop. By no means of coincidence, there was the flash of lightning exceeding the brightness of all others when he read the words:
"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."To make the long story get to an end, it was a good night filled with good people, good conversations, and good food.
It might have just started as another hike to tack onto my list. But, I will always remember how much I learned about the diversities and similarities of light this Fourth of July.
