New home

I am so grateful for my new home.

I used to live in Eagle Mountain, a small city of only 10,000 residents. I enjoyed the quietness. I enjoyed the expansive darkness from above; glittered in starlight I would sit outside at night, paint outside at night . . . it was a beautiful home, a large home, with a magazine worthy kitchen. However, idyllic it may have appeared; it had a plethora of drawbacks – most of which left their impact on the environment. The homes three bathrooms required thrice the amount of cleaning products; the large open spaces wasted valuable resources required to heat and cool the home.

Eagle Mountain is set 9 miles from town, 9 miles through Lehi and Saratoga Springs on a heavily congested two lane road. A trip to town took a minimum of 20 minutes, which stretched to 45 minutes during rush hour. Fuel consumption to and from town, to and from Perrie’s activities and friends, to and from our activities and friends, transportation that is ruining the streets of Lehi with congestion and poor air quality.

The entrance to our subdivision in Eagle Mountain was flanked by two massive stone walls with waterfalls flowing from each.

Our home was modest in comparison to the size of many of the homes that lined our streets.

Embedded in our subdivision and winding its’ way through our neighborhood was The Ranches Golf Club.

The city could be defined in two words – CONSUMPTION and WASTE. In fact, consumption could be the anthem of the neighborhood. Hummers and SUV’s lined the driveways of our streets. ATV vehicles parked in third car garages. Boats parked on concrete slabs. I initially thought my disgust was jealousy; thankfully it was not; as I examined my feelings towards my neighbors and my neighborhood I recognized that I detested everything Eagle Mountain stood for. Under the guise of “progress” Eagle Mountain promises its’ residents “a master-planned community that captures the small-town feel in the midst of Utah’s urban corridor. “ (emcity.org) Eagle Mountain is 40 miles Southwest of Salt Lake and thirty miles Northwest of Provo, with no bus route this means that the majority of its’ residents are commuting in their oversized land-eating vehicles of destruction. (One day I hope we are able to hold car manufacturers responsible for poor air quality as we have held cigarette companies responsible in the past.) Green lawns were required. As was the only fence allotted by the HOA, with a specific height, color and style of wood. The color of which had to be applied within so many days of the fences install to avoid a fine. I had a single strand of Christmas lights in the one and only tree on our property, a tree not much taller than myself and certainly no wider. I left my lights on the tree after Christmas last year, prompting a letter from the HOA which threatened a fine if my lights were not promptly removed; they were kind enough to enclose a photograph of this atrocity in my front yard. Perhaps concentration camp would be a more appropriate title than neighborhood.

I felt as though I were living inside the movie “Stepford Wives”. With neighbors that grinned and waved from their driveways as mechanically as Jim Carrey’s in “The Truman Show”, authenticity was nowhere to be found.

The decision to downsize was easy to make, yet hard to live with at first. Nevertheless, my only regret is that I once believed that living in Eagle Mountain was a good decision, placing my own desires above the needs of our planet – the only true place we can all call home.