Timpanogos


Book Description

Randal Anderson is in seventh grade when he rst realizes that women are complicated creatures. As he muddles through his testosterone-infused teen years with nothing more than a simple wish to have a girlfriend one day, Randal has no idea that his soul mate is about to make her rst appearance. One summer evening, shortly after high school graduation, Randal notices a pretty new girl. Though he has never seen her before, she seems strangely familiar. The attraction is so immediate and strong that it almost scares him. But there is one problem Allyson Crawford comes from old money. Randal comes from a middle-class Mormon family. Despite their di erences, however, their love is con rmed in an ancient spirit circle on Timpanogos Mountain. But when Randal makes a stupid mistake, he is morti ed knowing he has lost Allyson forever. After years of regret, a guilt-ridden Randal attempts to go on with his life, but the memories of Timpanogos and that perfect summer love still haunt his mind. He knows what he needs to do to nally rid himself of his phantom love, but it is only then when he discovers that life, just like love, is full of unexpected moments.




Timpanogos Cave National Monument


Book Description






















On Zion’s Mount


Book Description

Shrouded in the lore of legendary Indians, Mt. Timpanogos beckons the urban populace of Utah. And yet, no “Indian” legend graced the mount until Mormon settlers conjured it—once they had displaced the local Indians, the Utes, from their actual landmark, Utah Lake. On Zion’s Mount tells the story of this curious shift. It is a quintessentially American story about the fraught process of making oneself “native” in a strange land. But it is also a complex tale of how cultures confer meaning on the environment—how they create homelands. Only in Utah did Euro-American settlers conceive of having a homeland in the Native American sense—an endemic spiritual geography. They called it “Zion.” Mormonism, a religion indigenous to the United States, originally embraced Indians as “Lamanites,” or spiritual kin. On Zion’s Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians—and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Timpanogos with “Indian” meaning. This same pattern was repeated across the United States. Jared Farmer reveals how settlers and their descendants (the new natives) bestowed “Indian” place names and recited pseudo-Indian legends about those places—cultural acts that still affect the way we think about American Indians and American landscapes.