Houston, we found the problem. It’s me.
My resentment built until I dug into why the West has grown so fast, why Utah and Idaho have outpaced the nation, why the trails I hiked alone are now crowded, why the freeway that once moved now stalls, why the bucolic town I knew is unrecognizable.
I was sure of the answer. Invasion. Californians discovering my mountain home. Texans seeking cheaper land and views. People discovering what I already knew.
Then I looked at the actual numbers.
Utah’s growth over thirty years isn’t primarily in-migration. It’s births. Seventy percent natural increase—people from here having children. Idaho is different, sixty percent migration-driven. But Utah grows from within.
People who arrived and stayed. People born here. People who had kids and grandkids and never left.
Like me. More precisely: like my wife, like my children, like the choice I made to root here.
My wife came as a student, married me, stayed. We came from big families—mine seven, hers eight. We had four children. Got a job. Bought a house. Used good schools and infrastructure.
The community responded. Developers built. Employers hired. The place scaled to meet us.
Three of our four children anchored in Utah. Our oldest left for California and stayed there. The other three ping-ponged but came back, had children, and occupy homes. That’s nearly an 8x increase in my Utah footprint—all requiring more of exactly what I did: housing, schools, jobs, infrastructure, services, land.
It’s not an invasion. It’s the echo of my own choices, multiplied.
The trails I hiked alone? I showed my kids my favorite places when they were young, now my grandkids. Apparently, so did others. Solitude gone. Quiet gone.
The freeways and thoroughfares that moved? Gridlock at least twice a day. Routine construction. My two cars became seven or eight.
I wanted the research to make me feel better—to confirm outsiders caused this. Instead, it showed me I was the invasion, except I didn’t feel like an invader. I felt like I belonged.
My 8x multiplied by ten thousand families doing the same explains it all. And we all pitched in to acquire houses, require roads and more water lines, enjoy an abundance of fast-casual restaurants, welcome bike paths, and spend our money at stores. We were the pattern, not the exception.
My kids are living forward what I’m nostalgic for. They have no reference point for that quiet. My grandkids will likely rarely stand alone on a trail and understand what that meant to me. They will never know the West as sparsely populated. They’ll build their lives in what I required, and they may feel no loss because loss requires a before.
I point at the crowding. Three fingers point back.
Every grievance about what the place has become is built on choices I made to stay, have children, and require what families require. I can’t resent it without resenting the mechanism that made my own life possible here.
I still can’t leave. I still require. I still drive those gridlocked surface streets to see my grandkids. I still hope for a quiet trail on Saturday morning. I still benefit from every fast-casual restaurant and bike path my arriving made possible.
I’ll stop claiming ignorance. I didn’t architect the growth. But I required it. I can’t point at the crowding without pointing at myself.
It’s what roots are.
And the tree continues growing.
