The Canyon and the Conference

Last weekend was filled with some interesting events.  On Saturday, I got to enjoy some adventures up American Fork Canyon and on Sunday I attended a regional conference at the Marriot Center.


I've been saying to the girls I visiting teach for awhile that we need to go hiking, since I know that they like it and I've had a serious vacancy for a hiking buddy since I've been here.  Somehow, though, I've kept forgetting to plan ahead far enough to feel comfortable giving them notice.  Most of the time, I decide to take a hiking trip at most a day before I go.  This seemed like not enough notice to me.  Last week, however, I heard that we were going to be kissing our nice temps goodbye after the weekend, so I went into panic mode and asked them if they wanted to go.

Fortunately, they were super easy-going about it.  Stephanie, the older of the sisters, told me she was totally game and that her younger sister, Ellie, wanted to come too, but wouldn't get off work until 3 that Saturday.  That sounded fine to me, so we arranged to meet at 3 and go from there.  This gave me plenty of time to get some chores done earlier in the day so I could feel less guilty about going out.

In the end, Ellie didn't feel up to coming with us after work, so it was just Stephanie and I who went.  I was hoping to go see one of the cool falls I've heard about here, like Stewart Falls, but wasn't going to push for it.  Stephanie suggested a couple hikes that were in the area of a campground that her family always goes to, and while none of them sounded especially compelling to me, she didn't leap at the ideas I casually suggested, so I just went along with it.  I guess people often like to stick with what is familiar to them, but when it comes to hiking, I typically prefer to branch out and try new, interesting trails.

We settled on doing a ridge hike that originated at the campground, Timpanokee, that she's familiar with.  She had offered to drive, and on the way up, I was very glad she had, even though I'd planned to drive myself.  Being the passenger gave me a great opportunity to enjoy the great scenery without worrying about some of the narrow roads and such.  There were still a few yellow patches of aspens tucked into the mostly evergreen forests as we started climbing up from the canyon.  Stephanie told me about how things looked several weeks before when she had come with her family and also told me some good pointers about Timp cave and other sites along the way.

When we got up to Timpanokee, there were a bunch of cars lined up before us.  A guy came up to the window and informed us that there was a scene being filmed on the road at the moment and that it should only require us to wait a few minutes.  I found this quite exciting!  I've never been at a real film location other than lots before.  I wanted to ask him what movie they were filming for, but he's already moved on before I got a chance.  Stephanie said that she'd actually seen movies filmed there before and that it's a fairly common filming location.

As drove up to the campground parking lot, I saw quite a few vintage-looking army vehicles around various places, some in parking areas and others sitting on flat-bed trucks being moved around.  We also saw that all the campground's signs along the road had been covered with dark green cloth, no doubt to make them easier to edit out of shots later.  When we got to the main parking area where we stopped, there were a bunch of big tents set up as well as a number of trailers and such.  No one seemed to be around, though, when we got out, so we started on our hike.

By the time we got back from the hiking about two hours later, there was a guy out working with some equipment that seemed associated with the movie.  I was curious, so I walked up to him and asked about what they were filming.  He told me that it was a WWII production called War Pigs that is scheduled for release in 2015.  They are using Timpanokee as a stand-in for some of the Europe shots, apparently.  He was very helpful, and I was glad that I asked about it.  If it's not R, which there's probably a good chance it will be, I will probably check out the movie when it comes out!

I must say, the hike we did itself was one of the most lack-luster that I've ever done.  There wasn't a whole lot to see on it, mostly just various woods.  I think it actually would have been quite nice a few weeks ago, because there were quite a few nice, large aspen stands, but they were all pretty much totally bare by the time we hiked.  This is no doubt due to the fact that we were much higher up, and even the lower areas were starting to get past peak at that point.  Still, the bare trees had a kind of eerie look that was perfect for the Halloween season!

Some deer we saw on the trail.  This was the most exciting part of the hike.

Though the hike wasn't terribly enthralling, I very much enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Stephanie better.  She's a great person with many interesting experiences, and it was nice to have a more extended and relaxed opportunity to really get to know her better one-on-one.  Even though I've visiting taught her close to a year now, I feel like I got to understand her better on this one trip than I ever have before, and that alone was very much worth the trip!

We talked quite a bit about hiking and outdoor activities, as that is an interest we share and fit the occasion, but also talked about a wide variety of other topics.  She told me more about how Ellie's job has been going, there was a pretty lengthy discussion about how Apple is overrated, and then an even longer one about Hurricane Sandy.

It turns out that she was nannying in New York when it hit the city.  She talked about sheltering with the family she worked for during the storm and then even more about the recovery phase.  She was fortunate in that her employers had purchased a generator years before that was a big help to them, as their power was out for close to two weeks.  During that time, they were also able to help many neighbors and others charge phones and other needed devices for safety and work.  Still, there were the extended gas shortages that had to be dealt with along with general safety issues that took awhile to resolve.

She also mentioned that the because of the hurricane, trick-or-treating was cancelled for that Halloween.  Still, a large area of the city had everyone gather during the day on Halloween and enjoy a community celebration with trick-or-treating for the kids since everyone already had candy to share and were unable to do many other things anyway.  Stephanie said it was one of her best Halloween memories as there was a special spirit of unity and goodwill as everyone pulled together.

Because she was in a pretty heavily-affected area, she never ended up working on the Mormon Helping Hands recovery efforts.  I told her about some of my experiences in working there and how I have good memories associated with that period myself, despite the devastation.  Disasters really do have a unique way of humbling and softening people, in my experience.  It's no wonder the Lord often resorts to smiting us with them, if you will, even though He doesn't want to!

After our hike, we ended up heading to Tibble Fork Resevoir, which really was the scenic highlight of the trip for me.  That was quite an idyllic location.  The evergreen-covered ridges with part of Timp behind made the perfect background for the aqua lake.  It would have been fun to have done some hiking in that area, but it was getting to late at that point.

All in all, it was a great trip.  I got to see some interesting things and spend some time with a great person, so I felt richly rewarded for making a little effort to set things up.

On Sunday, I went to a regional conference at the Mariott Center where Elder Ballard spoke.  It was my first time (at least, as far as I remember) being in the Marriott Center, though I've seen it often enough on TV.  Mostly, it made my vertigo kick in, so I wasn't a huge fan.  Weirdly, though I'd come on my own, I ended up running into two girls from my ward who ended up sitting by me.  Call me weird, but I always see having people that I know around me during these sort of things as more of a drawback than a perk.  Really, I'd just prefer to read my book and meditate a bit while waiting for such events, but when I'm around someone who knows me, I feel obligated to talk, so talk is what I ended up doing.  I don't love such things, but it's good for me to be pushed out of my comfort zone for the sake of others sometimes, so it was all good.

During the Conference itself, Elder Ballard talked about a number of things, including how bad and soul-sucking video games were for one of his grandsons.  His main theme was the idea that we all needed to find time to have a personal interview with ourselves and determine what we needed to fix most in our lives.  Strangely, what occupied my mind mostly during the meeting was a sense of deep gratitude for the opportunities I've been given to serve and a more clear realization on how such service has changed me.  I expect I will write more on this later, so I'll leave it at that for now.  I don't think Elder Ballard really said anything about service, but that was what I mostly got out of the meeting.  It was also fun to see that my sister-in-law's brother, John, was the music leader for the conference.  I guess some of the BYU stakes were in attendance too.

After the conference concluded, there was, of course, a mad dash of people trying to get out of the building and to their cars.  I was in no hurry, so after the people around me left, I settled back into my seat to finally get some reading and thinking in.  During this period, Elder Ballard came down and shook hands with anyone who got in line for quite awhile.  I was reminded of how I'd often seen this similar ritual carried out while in college after devotionals with apostles, and it always impresses me that they want to fulfill the desires of the members even though they doubtless would rather go somewhere quiet to rest.

Though I could have easily run down and gotten in line myself, I didn't.  The sort of celebrity worship of apostles that goes on is a little weird to me.  It's not like they have a magic touch or anything, so shaking hands with one doesn't appeal to me.  Having a real, personal experience with an apostle, I can see the value in, but not in simply being able to say that I shook this or that person's hand!

After the Marriott Center was cleared out of everyone except those working on clean-up and a handful of other stragglers like myself, I exited myself.  On the way, I made a point of expressing my gratitude for their service to a guard and some workers I passed on the way out.  I'm grateful for those who sacrifice to make such events possible.  They deserve more recognition than they get.

The parking lot and University Ave were still a complete mess when I got out, but this didn't matter much to me as I wasn't planning on driving anywhere in a hurry.  Instead, I dropped off a few things in my car and changed my shoes, then began to walk.  I'd decided earlier that I wanted to take the opportunity to walk up to the Provo Temple and do some reading up there for awhile.

As I made my way through the jammed parking lot and out to the main sidewalk, I ran into another walker clearly coming from the meeting.  Since we were heading in the same direction, I struck up a conversation with him as we went down a coupe blocks.  Seeing the awful jam, he had decided to leave his brother  the brother's girlfriend in the car and see how far he could walk toward home before they were able to pick him up.  I'm not sure how far he actually made it, but it was no doubt a good distance since we went close to a mile together before going separate ways.

It was a pretty nice day still, so the walk was quite pleasant and it wasn't too cold when I got up to the temple either.  I found a nice bench facing the temple and dug in.  I'm reading a book about the temple now, specifically, a lot about the ancient temple from a scholarly LDS perspective, so it was nice to study that topic in that setting.  While I wasn't convinced by everything, I found some good nuggets and other pieces to consider.  It was a rewarding study which I enjoyed for about an hour and a half.  At that point, about 50 missionaries flooded up from the MTC and things became much too rowdy for my taste to be conducive to in-depth study, so I left.  No doubt, they wanted to use my bench anyway.

The walk back was again very pleasant and gave me good time to reflect on what I'd read as well as other things in my life.  I felt richly blessed by the time I got back to my car in the now deserted parking lot.  I'm glad that I didn't have to rush out of the meeting, but instead got to savor taking some time to be still and know God.

It's nice to have time on weekends to slow down a bit and appreciate all the good that is around me.  I'm grateful that I had the chance to do just that last week.