west by northwest (by midwest)

the vanishing point is me

In Iowa, I loved the wide open spaces, how I could stand in one spot and see the horizon in all directions: the vanishing point.  Rather than feeling exposed, I felt the world was exposed to me: limitless, directionless, requiring no map.  I could flee any direction and disappear.

When I moved to Portland, I felt unnerved at first by the mountains and nearby ocean.  I felt what I had never felt in Iowa: exposed.  Suddenly, there was no visible vanishing point, no escape route, no horizon.  The only way out was with a map - and possibly even hiking boots or snow tires. None of the roads or trails out of the city were straight, easy, predictable lines.  None of them followed a latitude or longitude line.  And if I wanted to flee west, I would be forced to confront the ocean.

The mountains played games with me, too, as if they sensed my panic.  They disappeared inside clouds for days, reappearing again suddenly, as though a magician had lifted a cloth.  Earthquake swarms threatened eruptions that never came.  Skiiers and hikers disappeared daily.

But at least I could catch a glimpse sometimes of the horizon, in the breaks between peaks or hills or forests.  There was still a chance for escape.

Over time, I grew used to the mountains, and I began to feel nestled into the city - comforted, even.  But I never trusted them, especially Mt. Hood.  And when I read news of North Korea’s nuclear program, I felt it in my gut, just as I had as a small child watching Cold War news stories on television:  If North Korea attacked, it would most certainly choose a route over the Pacific Ocean - the ocean that kissed our state shore only a short drive away.  Nothing there to protect us.  A lethal enemy flying in from the vanishing point, to bring the vanishing point to us.

In Salt Lake City, I trust the mountains even less, and I am not sure why.  They don’t play games.  In fact, I have yet to see them disappear completely in fog (although I suspect next winter they might).  I have yet to hear of any earthquake swarms.

Maybe it is because of their shape - not like the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, the only ones I really know.  Here, mountains look like rows of molars in the back of a mouth: flat, chipped, rough, and decaying.  No peaks.  In Oregon, mountains looked like incisors, with peaks that came to sharp points - honest mountains, volcanoes that looked as lethal as they were, that never tried to hide their deadliness.

Here, the mountains surround in us every direction, with no peaks, just walls of rock, as though a tsunami had crashed into the city and frozen into stone at the crest of the wave.  I can never catch a glimpse of the horizon at all, never see - in a literal sense - the possibility of escape.

I have to find a way to create the vanishing point in my mind: to make it so the vanishing point is me.