Читать книгу Shaped by Snow. Defending the Future of Winter онлайн

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For many of the one million human residents of the Salt Lake Valley today, the mountains offer an escape from the twisting rivers of cement and boxy confines of suburbia, world-class backpacking, skiing, and rock climbing, and provide the valley with freshwater from snowmelt.

My family has lived in the Salt Lake Valley since the early 1900s. Though my mother’s family hails from the Bay Area in Northern California, my father grew up on a fruit farm in Provo, Utah, about forty miles south of Salt Lake City. My sister and I were born in a hospital near the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Until we left for college, both choosing to head to the Bay Area rather than remain in Utah, we lived within two miles of the mouth of the canyon. These canyons and peaks, valleys and cirques are the places that shaped us, that we consider home.

Naming

Half of the bird was the color of a jewel, a bright cobalt that spread from its belly to the tip of its paddle-like tail. Its head and chest were a black onyx, with a few thin wisps of blue between its eyes. It had a crested horn of feathers on its head.