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When I was sixteen, I travelled to Springville, Utah with my Scottish dance school to perform at the annual World Folkfest. The festival was a major source of pride and pleasure for the locals, and they fed us, housed us, and drove us to our performances. They also provided us with various forms of Utah entertainment: hiking through caves, floating around waterparks, and eating tex mex at bowling alleys.
The oldest son of the family, Jake, picked me up along with two other dancers. Jake had brought along his best friend Jamie, and we rattled home in an old but beloved car, speeding through a hot dry place I wouldn’t see properly until the next morning. The first question we received was about our religion; my friend answered that she was Mennonite, and my brother and I said we were atheists. “What do atheists from Canada do all day—smoke weed and masturbate?” And thus, our Utah adventure was off to a colourful start.
Jake was a bit of an edgelord but a real sweetie pie too: the gun toting, weight lifting variety who was always making his little siblings laugh. At nineteen years old, he should’ve already been off on his Mormon mission before returning home to get married and start a family, but he’d drank too many protein shakes. No, really—he’d damaged his kidneys by pounding several strawberry shakes a day, and hadn’t received the clean bill of health that was required of a prospective missionary. So he was biding his time, speeding around the desert in his clunker with Jamie, yelling “it is BURNin” in regards to the heat and chugging energy drinks, which I really hope his kidneys didn’t mind so much. This was more rebellious than it might sound, as caffeine was forbidden by the Mormon church at that time. Since 2012, caffeinated sodas have been allowed while coffee and tea remain banned. But at that time, Jake and Jamie were being Very Bad Boys.
We arrived at a very large taupe house, and met Jake’s parents along with six of his siblings. Everybody’s name started with a J—I wondered if this was why Jake had chosen Jamie on the playground—including the family dog, Jackson. There were rows of the kids’ school portraits lining the hallways, and the family had a walk-in pantry larger than my current kitchen. It was only after my friend said “looks like you’ve got enough food to feed an army” that we learned Mormons tend to store many months’ worth of food in their homes in case of emergency.
Waking up that first morning, I was blown away by the landscape I found myself in. During a short walk before breakfast, I took in the foothills bordering the backyards of the neighbourhood. They looked dry and bare, nearly naked, compared to the mountains back home, which were blanketed by swathes of evergreen trees right up to the snow line.
To my eyes, accustomed to the lush and the wet, Springville possessed an alien beauty.
Before we left on the trip, the dance school director had prepped us on how to be respectful in this new religious setting. We learned about the rules against caffeine, alcohol and swearing, and we were told that their church service lasted nearly all day. We learned about the modesty rules for women: shirts should not be low-cut or reveal the shoulders, and shorts and skirts should reach the knees. I tried my best to tow the line, but I would’ve been in trouble if it weren’t for Julia, the bold five-year-old of the family. Whereas the older family members were too polite to point out my accidental transgressions, Julia helped me out with phrases such as “you’re going outside wearing THAT?”
The biggest surprise Julia had in store for us was when she told us there was an eighth sibling. Whereas there was an abundance of portraits of all the other children throughout the house, there was only one photo of this boy, and no one except Julia talked about him. Once she broke the seal, however, Jake filled us in. His younger brother Joshua had started questioning god, and as a result, his dad had evicted him from the house and moved him into the garden shed. From there he had a choice: he could move back into the house and be a faithful Mormon, or he would have to leave for good and endure excommunication from his family and community. He chose the latter, leaving home at sixteen. No one seemed to know what had happened to him after that. I remember hoping someone in the family was defying the shunning, even if it had to be a secret.
The father of the household was the principal of Provo Canyon, the school for troubled youth featured in Paris Hilton’s recent documentary. He invited my friends and I to play paintball with the students. So we put on as many layers as we could stand in the heat and off we went. Paintball is downright terrible, by the way, unless you like getting welts for fun. But the teens were sweet and silly, and upon meeting us, more than one declared that they would move to Canada to smoke weed just as soon as they were free.
The most American thing I did while in Utah was shoot a gun. Jake loved guns so much that he’d developed hearing loss from his hobby (this guy was not one for moderation.) Somewhere in my house I have a picture of Julia in a fuzzy pink nightgown and a gas mask, showing off her family’s military gear. Shooting guns was outside of my comfort zone, given that I’d protested the war in Iraq with my dad. But the when-in-Rome vibes kicked in and I went for it. After a safety lesson, Jake taught me how to hold the gun and plant my feet so I wouldn’t topple over from the kickback. I pulled the trigger and felt the blast reverberate through my head, then echo through the dusty canyon. Jake was thrilled to watch a pacifist from Canada shoot a gun, and I could hardly blame him.
Utah was hot, especially in a velvet jacket, a wool kilt, and leather ghillies—but it was absolutely beautiful. The mountains that surrounded us, the flat open valley, and the burning sunsets made for a magnificent festival setting. When the Morning Star Native American Ensemble took the stage in their brilliant regalia, I was struck by how special it was that the dancers ranged in age from toddler to elder. I also saw a hoop dance for the first time, and the teenage boy who performed it blew me away with his elegance and agility. That guy was responsible for a lot of blushing and giggling in my group’s tent.
My time in Utah was short but it left an indelible impression on me, and it wasn’t limited to wondering why Canada doesn’t have apple soda. My memories are vivid and bright, but there are shadows at the edges. The contradiction of a family and community who warmly welcomed strangers into their homes but would cast out their own children troubled me. One day I’d start to notice the contradictions in the place I called home. But on that plane ride home, my mind swirled with the costumes, the moves, and the proud smiles of dancers bringing their cultural traditions to this little corner of the world. One day, I hope to make it back to Springville and take my place in the crowd. I’d love to watch the hoop dancer one more time, by now fully grown.
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