A Letter to New Hampshire

Wasatch Magazine

Dear Granite State,

Not a day goes by where I don’t feel a tinge of nostalgia and miss your comforting forests of lush green and rivers of blue hues. Yet moving over 2,000 miles away from you to the Beehive State has taught me lessons about myself, others, and the environment, that leave me feeling pulled between two places in my heart and mind.

To make a list of pros and cons would be moot. I feel deeply connected to my upbringing in New England in ways which have no rhyme or reason despite abandoning the East coast for a romanticized ideal of bigger and better things. I can admit it was a rough first year in Utah. Getting acquainted with my surroundings, a new community, and a new lifestyle took more mental and physical strength than I have exerted before. I was exhausted. I spent days and nights coming to terms with the embarrassment I felt that this dream of moving West to be a modernized cowgirl was over my head and that I should retreat to the White Mountains of New Hampshire before I was in too deep.

Frankly, I felt like an imposter. I tried to curate the life I wanted, a life in the outdoors, and felt hopeless. At that point, I was just admiring the fruit on the tree without digging into the roots. I had no idea that I wasn’t fully committed to this new experience. After many long talks with my family, mostly my grandparents, they always told me I could come home which left a tantalizing open door. Yet somehow this exit route didn’t make me feel better, it became my motivation to push on, take risks, and create memories, which would one day lead to me closing it.

I learned how to ski, which as a payment, cost one of my ACLs. I learned to climb in defiance of my fear of heights (I’m still working on it). I learned how to raft and bruised my ego and body. I burnt my skin in the high-altitude sun and tattooed my arms and legs. I cut my hair, let it grow out, then cut it again. After another six months in Utah, I began to feel as though I were physically adapting to my surroundings and building confidence to recreate and explore.

During this time, I met my peers in the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism cohort. Suddenly the pieces of my past and new life were fitting together. I found community. The bridge formed and now, had people to share my deepest feelings of the outdoors with. I joined WOLI and Wasatch Magazine which gave me outlets of creativity and passion and directly fed my yearning to be in nature. I felt like my education aligned with my values, Eureka!

I felt content in the ways that I could balance work, school, and leisure, connecting my various realms of commitment to one another. I spent time canyoneering and camping in the desert, touching sandstone and clay in the trench of the Ancient Sea. I climbed in the Wasatch, reuniting with the familiar granite compositions that I would sun-bathe on, like a deprived lizard, during my hikes in New Hampshire. I skied in powder, on sunbaked crust, and reveled in many snowy, vibrant sunrises up the Cottonwood Canyons. I was inspired and excited to take my photography to the next level to capture and share these memories with others.

All of these experiences came with a toll, however. I still feel like an imposter. I feel pain and grief of people that I’ve known and grown apart, or plainly lost, whether that was back in New England or presently in Salt Lake. I feel jealous and scared. I miss the abundance of water and empty dirt roads. Yet what I’ve learned has greatly outweighed the sense that I should concede to a former version of myself and live out the rest of my days in regret rather than welcoming the future. Time will act in unreasonable and sometimes unfair ways. As college students, we’re just entering the phase of learning how life truly just keeps truckin’.

So, if I were to impart some advice at my “wise” age of 21, I would say this: To all the students and the larger Salt Lake community that has an inkling of a desire to connect to nature, do it. To anyone feeling as though they don’t belong outside, keep going outside and make that space yours. To anyone who feels scared, underprepared, or it’s too late to embark on a new journey, take the risk and see what you learn. Through trial and error, I’ve eventually found what works for me and found my peace in the Utah landscapes despite it being near opposite to the environment I was nurtured in. The outdoors are incomplete without the connections we make and advice we share with others. You can of course find solace and peace alone in nature, but you’d be surprised how much the things you learn in reflection translate into your everyday life.

The outdoors, both in New Hampshire and Utah have made me a better person and allowed me to find a passion and future which I could never have imagined. When I was in 5^th grade, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up and I answered generically, “doctor” since even then I thought it was a loaded topic but the unknowing made me terrified. Now, if you were to ask me what I’d like to do for the rest of my life, it would still be generic, “the outdoors” but the unknowing of where that will take me is now thrilling and brimming with possibility.

So, thank you New Hampshire for teaching me values which I cherish today and for now, I’ll see you again, I just don’t know when.

——

I’ll end this piece by sharing a poem that was read to me on a recent trip in the San Rafael Swell, which can summarize my feelings of loss, love, fear, and excitement as I explore a new place that I now call home. I hope others can resonate with this poem by Joy Sullivan as I feel it pertains to times of change, navigation of the unknown, and commitment to new beginnings.

Instructions for Traveling West:

First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives you’re not living.

Then, you must commit to the road and the rising loneliness. To the sincere thrill of coming apart.

Divorce yourself from routine and control. Instead, find a desert and fall in.

Take the trail that promises a view. Get lost. Break your toes. Bruise your knees. Keep going. Watch a purple meadow quiver. Get still. Pet trail dogs. Buy the hat. Run out of gas. Befriend strangers.

Knight yourself every morning for your newborn courage.

Give grief her own lullaby.

Drink whiskey beside a hundred-year-old cactus. Honor everything.

Pray to something unnameable. Fall for someone impractical.

Reacquaint yourself with desire and all her slender hands.

Bear beauty for as long as you are able, and if you spot a sunning warbler glowing like a prism, remind yourself – joy is not a trick.

– Joy Sullivan 2023