Tuscany in Utah?

Do you ever experience a kind of deja vu you can’t explain? My latest experience involved a Sunday drive.

When you enter Big Cottonwood Canyon at the end of summer near high noon, the mountains & fields appear whitened in hue & more flooded with illumination than if you were to visit at other times of the year. For example, Guardsman Pass is closed for 3/4 of the year due to the tight switchback roads & snow that clogs up or even blocks passage over & through to Deer Valley & even Park City. Now, usually, when you are shooting pictures, the recommendation from most professionals is to use light in the morning or later afternoon, due to the angle of the sun & the kind of color it emits. The kind of light that sun beams down at noon is quite harsh, casting upon the scenery almost a spotlight effect that can drown out detail & color. The images taken at the height of that midday sun bleaches everything as if you were looking at faded postcards or tinted photographs from the early 20th Century.

And so, when I look at the mountains on this loop, I’m eerily reminded of both the New Hampshire mountains & the Alps in Switzerland, near Gstaad. Mainly, I think of these places because of the postcards & historic images that garnered my attention either through study or personal interest. Of course, these are vastly different places due to a variety of reasons–temperature, seasonality, types of rock, elevation, regional peoples & even the types of grasses & trees. And, yet, when looking at photographic images, you can’t necessarily see those differences that become so evident in person. I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy & even collect the tinted photography of Wallace Nutting & Charles Sawyer, so I still find such differentiation interesting & beautiful. I recognize the kinds of scenes I’m used to seeing in photography but once thought unrealistic in live settings, & it can strike me as strange.

I think the recurring theme of nature as a balm to the soul in my writing ties to my need as an introvert to find an escape. I’ve discussed this with other introverts & ambiverts as well, & it seems consistent. Now, I’m not making the claim that extroverts don’t like nature–my personality is such that I try to avoid absolutes in my thinking & writing. I don’t think people are solely one thing & that there aren’t exceptions or variations. Susan Cain in her work had asserted that nobody is 100% introvert or extrovert, & if they were then they’d likely have very significant problems in a number of ways. Most people who can function effectively in social groups have the ability to shift & perform, but the energy dynamic is what matters most.

For introverts, being around people DRAINS them–energy flows out from them, not in. Extroverts experience the opposite. They feel charged up by being around other people, so they crave it when they are feeling low when alone.

As I continued on the Sunday drive, the now burnished fields atop the pass reminded me of Tuscany, the way the roads wove through the landscape with the sharp vertical lines of the trees that decorated the tops of little hills. And it struck me how looking at natural settings becomes that transcendent experience American Romantic writers often described. It’s as if you’re in this web of consciousness, connecting an ever-growing catalog of images, which seem so far apart in distance & are expected to be different in so many ways; yet, the reality is that they all have reference points & characteristics that can relate. Like siblings in a family where no two look alike but all share some features with their parents & siblings in enough ways so as to intimate the relation, so too are this planet’s landscapes, diverse in complex ecosystems but still threaded together through migration, atmosphere, & even weather events.

My thinking of Europe while passing through wasn’t such a stretch, given that the Tour de Utah cycling marathon had just taken place, & you could still see cyclists training on the switchbacks, working to increase their endurance & strength. I wouldn’t have ever guessed that I’d be reminded of Italy just two months ago when these peaks were a lush green & spotted with snow. The thought of an Italian aesthetic made me quite happy, since I loved the Edith Wharton Society conference in Florence in 2012, where I had the privilege to visit Bernard Berenson’s I Tatti villa, where Wharton would sojourn to visit her dear friend. Maxfield Parrish’s illustrated plates for Wharton’s Italian Villas & Their Gardens perhaps carries more resonance with me because Parrish lived in Cornish, New Hampshire, & he often used NH hills & mountains for his fantastical paintings. So, those hills & mountains carried a certain familiarity to the eye, even when he illustrated landscapes from foreign lands.

When you make the descent down into Deer Valley, & dropping into Park City with its charming gingerbread cottages & high-end shopping, you start to encounter the resort country that stretches almost as far as the eye can see. I’ve never seen so many grand luxury resorts sprawling out over such an expanse of land. It makes sense, of course, as winter will bring countless visitors to the area for skiing & the Sundance Film Festival. I guess I’m just kind of amazed by how these images all flow together, from tinted antique photographs to color plate illustrations to memories of landscapes from abroad. Our minds can weave together a tapestry of natural images which flow into one another through a shared emotional response, delayed or immediate.

Only through reflection, when I make myself sit down & write & value the gifts life has given me can I approximate releasing the stress of a career in the modern world. Nature gives me this escape. Hopefully, this makes sense to other introverts & might off some relief as well.

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