Inverted Pioneer
A Prosetry Piece
When people ask me where I'm from, I’ll give them one of my many places. I'll give them an east coast city where I spent the most time, or I'll give them the river-town where my family laid their roots. But, hometowns are more than years lived and relatives established. They have a funny kind of gravity that spins you back into them. Hometowns are woven into you, they leave their skyline imprinted on your body.
And by that definition, my hometown is the 7th floor of the Provo hospital.
Air pollution concentrates in the Wasatch Front…A number of studies have identified potential links between adverse birth outcomes and exposure to elevated levels of air pollutants like particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide (EPA, 2013m; Shah et al., 2011).
Utah Bureau of Epidemiology
This is where I’m from, the interim space between Provo, person, and particulate.
I didn’t grow up here for long, I didn’t grow, hardly at all. I’d bound out to my childhood, like an astronaut on a Geneva-steel spacewalk, a monitor on my chest tethering me back to floor seven.
The view wasn't bad, as far as involuntary housing goes. From February to March, you often couldn't see past the SWKT. The winter's inversion had washed-out the memory of the Wasatch. So, I'd draw mountains in the condensation of my window. I'd squint at the lines of braking college cars, strung on the ground like christmas lights.
In Utah, 50% of the primary air pollutants are from vehicle emissions
Utah Department of Environmental Quality
The world was a blueprint of ratios; for every molecule, there were 4 cuts of ozone- for every 4 dance recitals, a hospitalization. After recess, I'd cough up my resentment for people who didn't have to know what the AQI is.
Air quality in Utah decreases the median life expectancy by 1.1-3.6 years. Approximately 10% of premature deaths in Utah are due to adverse impacts of air-quality
(2,500-8,000 deaths a year).
Human Health and Economic Costs of Air Pollution in Utah: An Expert Assessment, MDPI 2020
That was my least favorite ratio, one tenth. Utah valley slips down like the bottom of a picnic basket between the mountains. They say it's like a bowl for the inversion, tight like unto a dish. One tenth. It doesn't look much like an altar, but primary taught me to know what a tithe looks like.
So, my family became inverted pioneers. We took our pilgrimage East, seeking salvation in reverse- and it worked.
Over 45% of Utah deaths due to COVID-19 occurred when a patient had at least one pre-existing condition…In the last 14 days, Utah County, COVID-19 cases have increased 220%.
Utah Department of Health, coronavirus.utah.gov
But, hometowns have a funny type of gravity, and I've found myself here again. Sunday sings hymns to a silent dog-whistle of denial, and if I’m honest, sometimes I sing along. Afterall, I want this to be over too.
Yet, the irony is not lost on me. The same town that cut my lungs with callous air and shrugged it off as sacred, is the same town that discards the ‘pre-existing’. Primary taught me about pre-existence, perhaps Provo will condemn me for it.
My roommate asks why people still take "this whole thing so seriously” and-
I lose the breath to say
How tired I am-
of poison air, how tired-
I am-
of being-
tithed.