Salt

I was about 8 or 9-years-old the first time I saw the Great Salt Lake. It was the grand finale of a week-long family vacation. We had driven all the way to Colorado to visit my mom's grandparents and then we met up with several family members to celebrate my paternal grandmother's birthday in Park City. We rode the alpine slide and took a nighttime ride on a ski lift. I had never seen a landscape quite like that one and I bought a postcard to try to remember the beauty I had seen. It was the perfect end to a summer day. It was sad to think that soon we would be driving home. It seemed we had been on the go for weeks (I had the blisters on my feet to prove it) but we had one more stop to make before heading back to California.

While I rely on postcards and photographs to conjure distant memories I will probably never forget approaching the Great Salt Lake dressed in swimming gear. My older sister ran out to the water with my two cousins. My parents had explained that the lake was shallow and the water was so salty it practically held you up off the ground. At that age I had a very difficult time floating in water (I was skin and bones) and I was fascinated with Peter Pan. I constantly wondered what it would be like to walk on a cloud. I looked out on the water and heard my sister and cousins playing and laughing and longed to join them. There was one problem: I was incredibly grossed out by the 10 foot stretch of filthy black silt mixed with seagull poop that surrounded the lake for as far I could see. The only way to get in the water was to walk through the muck. I stood on the sandy shore and considered my options: watch my sister and cousins have fun or go join them. Someone cheerily explained that the ‘mud’ would quickly dissolve the second I stepped into the water. “Hmm… that couldn’t be too bad,” I thought. I unlaced my canvas tennis shoes.

I set my shoes and socks in the sand and took a stomach twisting step into the slime. My other foot followed and I tried to move carefully so it wouldn’t spatter onto my legs. It was a torturous balancing act to move fast enough to suit my unsteady stomach but slow enough to ensure my footing. At last I reached the water and lifted my blackened foot over the water’s surface. The water was warm and I quickly stepped in, happy to be free of the wasteland behind me. My hopeful feet had expected to be buoyed up as though I were standing on a spongy cloud but in a moment I knew something was terribly wrong.

As soon as my feet were immersed they began to burn, and I mean burn. This mysterious water had somehow managed to set my feet on fire. I threw my head back and screamed. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I cried as loud as I could. How could my sister and cousins not feel this burning? Convinced that the seagull sludge was burning my feet, I futilely sloshed my feet in the stupid magic water in an attempt to unslime myself. Someone yelled, “Get out of the water!” To my great dismay I stepped back in the seagull poo. I shifted my weight from side to side crying, “My feet, my feet!” Through squinted tear-filled eyes I could see my dad running toward me. He picked me up and ran so fast toward the parking lot I thought I’d bounce right out of his arms and into the excrement. Luckily that didn’t happen. Instead he found an outdoor shower head and turned it on full blast. My uncle helped him point the freezing cold water at my feet. The water cleared away all the grime and exposed bright red blisters slightly obscured by transparent flapping skin. The salt water had done quite a number on my poor blistered feet.

After my feet were clean I sat wrapped in a beach blanket on the passenger seat of my uncle’s giant camping van. The pain soon subsided but I was so upset and confused it took a while to stop crying. Lucky for me my uncle had been generous enough to share a bag of ranch-flavored CornNuts with me and they were a great distraction. Finally the pressure in my chest released and I was able to laugh about what just happened.

I learned a simple lesson that day: you don’t expose open blisters to salt water. Ever. My parents always did their best to teach and protect me but there’s no way they could warn me about every single risk in life. I’ve had to discover many of them on my own. Sometimes we look at people in the distance and say, “That’s where I want to be. That’s what I want to do.” We put ourselves through a lot of crap to get there only to find out we don’t belong. Instead we have to turn and retreat. Sometimes it is a public spectacle but many times these battles are private. We can scream and shout when we don’t get our way. Our parents come running. Sometimes we accept their help and sometimes we swat it away. Regardless, they won’t abandon us in our hour of need. It doesn’t matter if we’re surrounded by darkness and filth or burning in a pool of consequences. They understand the world’s luring power but more importantly they understand what it is like to hurt. I’m grateful for parents who carried me from danger and showered me with love, even when the water was freezing cold.