CRADLED
By Lindsay Eagar
Photography: Austen Diamond, VisitUtah.com
“If you’re born in Utah, you’ll die in Utah.”
Someone from California said this when I was fifteen, and it split me in two:
Me, claustrophobic, too busy clawing for an escape hatch, I didn’t notice there were no locks —
And me now, still alive in Utah, but also reborn, a hundred versions of me made and remade.
Here to see my town’s first stoplight, first second high school, first third freeway exit. Yet the old brick bungalows along the parade route are still the most expensive. I’ll gladly lay my bones here when I’m through with them.
The mountains can be there to lock you in, or they can be there to cradle you. To fill the sky. To give you things to climb.
Lindsay Eagar was born and raised just outside Salt Lake City. She lives with her husband and two wild daughters in a house full of books. Her debut novel was “Hour of the Bees,” while her follow-up novel, “Race to the Bottom of the Sea,” was named by Booklist as one of the “50 best middle grade books of the century.”