"I noticed when I came home that traffic was building up through town. There must be an accident on the interstate."
These were the words my wife told my daughter as we snarfed down our dinner. We had planned on leaving early for tonight's rehearsal.
Turns out we needed to leave a lot earlier.
Except for three years, I've lived all my fifty-three and a half years in Utah. I think the population of the planet, when I was born, was about half of what it is today. And I know the population of our state has more than quadrupled in that time. When my parents bought a beautiful plot of land on a mountain back in the late 1960s, our little town was just that...little. I think there were only a few thousand people who called Farmington home.
Funny thing--if you provide food, water, jobs to people, they end up marrying and producing kids, which, in turn, produce kids of their own. And those kids want to live where they grew up, many of them anyway. I know our town has been growing. Fields where we once wandered and played as kids are long gone, replaced by homes, schools, stores, and movie theaters Most of the time the growth hasn't affected us too much. I no longer commute and we don't travel very much as a general rule.
So, when times comes to hit the road during rush hour or if there's an accident on the main roads, I keep thinking to myself, "Where did all these people come from?" The truth is, Most have been here a long time and more are joining them every day.
We made to to our destination only a few minutes late, which, considering the circumstances, was amazing. And next time, as I'm sitting in my home, away from busy roads, I need to think--there's more people out there than I realize. Once I hit the road, I end up joining them. I wonder if anyone else asks themselves where I came from?
