MLK Day Outing

Sometime during the afternoon of Martin Luther King Day, Brian and I decided we needed to get out of the house. When we walk out onto the street outside our apartment, we have a great view of Utah Lake, and in the evenings the opposite shore is lit up by hundreds of lighted homes. This has long intrigued us. Although we know in theory that Saratoga Springs exists and is, in fact, well-populated and growing, it just seems so far away from where we stand. We've talked about driving out there on for quite some time, just to investigate.

I think seeing the lights across the lake is even stranger for me than it is for Brian. When I first moved to Provo, the opposite side of Utah Lake was pretty devoid of life. I never went out there during my undergrad years, but I imagined a single lonely road between the lake and the less-majestic western mountains, and I think that image was pretty close to the truth. Housing developments were already wending their way toward the opposite side of the lake even then, but when I moved back to Utah a couple years ago, it seemed as though civilization way out yonder had exploded into being, and it baffled me because it was so far away from anything.

But land out there is cheap, and cheap is appealing, as well as space and new houses. And when we actually drove there on Martin Luther King Day, it took less time to get there than I would have expected. Saratoga Springs was mostly just what we expected - lots of biggish, newish homes that all looked very much alike, lots of LDS churches, and a handful of schools. No grocery stores (this was shocking to me - how has no one built a grocery store yet?). No gas stations. A dance studio.

We had taken Jin with us in the car, and so as we reached the (current) far end of Saratoga Springs, we found a small harbor where we could park and take Jin on a short walk. It was cold, though not quite as cold as it has been, and the lake and harbor were completely and solidly frozen over. There were a couple rocky points that curved around to mostly enclose the harbor, and we walked Jin out along one of those points. Brian thought it would be fun to walk Jin back along the ice. Being cold and pregnant, I handed the leash over and said I'd meet them back at the beginning, and then watched Brian and Jin pick there way down over the rocks to reach the ice. Or at least, Brian was picking his way and Jin was leaning more toward bounding. I had visions of Jin leaping, with the leash still in Brian's hand, and Brian's head smashing against the rocks, so I told him to be careful. "If Jin bolts," I said, "drop the leash." I thought I was just offering an unnecessary word of caution, but almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, Jin did indeed bolt, quite suddenly. Brian let out a quick yell and dropped the leash, and Jin went dashing out across the ice. Brian had given me his camera to take a picture of the two of them walking on the ice. This is the picture I captured. It was literally seconds after Jin escaped. He's a fast dog.

A lot of you already know that Jin is a runner, that he escaped and cavorted around my Ann Arbor neighborhood well over twenty times before I moved to Utah. He's only escaped twice since we've come to Utah, and he has never gotten free in such a big, completely unfamiliar area. I watched in terror and amusement as he sprinted back and forth across the frozen harbor a few times, and then mostly in terror as he came back toward me and ran out between the two rocky points onto the huge, icy expanse of Utah lake. For just a few seconds, I was sure that he would take off, and that we would never see him again, that he would get himself lost and frozen somewhere on the desolate lake. He paused, looked out at the lake as I called to him, and then maybe even he was overwhelmed by the expansiveness and he turned around and ran back. He did a couple more laps, and then trotted back to the rocky point where I was watching. I clamored down and grabbed his collar, and Brian and I walked him back across the ice to the parking lot.

Actually, part of me loved seeing Jin run free, especially in retrospect with the knowledge that he willingly returned to me after he got his fill. He loves running, and he gets so little opportunity to do so. Even that little inlet was larger than the largest backyard or tennis court he has ever been let loose in, and he seemed so happy, and so perfectly content to come back to us when he was done. I wish he was the sort of dog I trusted to purposefully let off leash in large spaces, but I know that would just be a disaster waiting to happen.

Anyway, it was a pretty low-key day off, but I think all three of us thoroughly enjoyed our little adventure across the lake, and Brian and I have satisfied our curiosity about Saratoga Springs.