Every decade, there are a handful of new slang words or phrases that are added permanently to the scope of the American English lexicon giving our language new and sometimes more robust or more nuanced ways to express the subtleties of our emotions and our experiences. Where would we be without the cat’s meow of the 20’s or the moxie of the 30’s? How would we know about the summer hits or who’s in charge without the blockbuster and the big cheese of the 40’s? And, we can’t gloss over the 40’s without mentioning what howstuffworks.com says is “the greatest slang word of all time” – one that almost every generation seems to still pass down as one of its own – how cool is that? We still get decked out long after the 50’s and we still hang loose and say “peace out” after we split, even though the 60’s have long passed us by. And, then, we can still catch each other on the flip side and be psyched when we do, even though the groovy 70’s have gone the way of the dodo. And even though the totally awesome 80’s are long gone, we can still be stoked that they were there. By the 90’s, we had all that and a bag of chips. And we still don’t want no scrubs! And the 2000’s have given us much new linguistic cud to chew. Like every set of decades, the 2000’s and the 2010’s have made contributions that will stick around and some that will fade into the past and seem foreign or out of place if even mentioned. We already know that bromances aren’t going anywhere and people will probably be ghosting each other for decades to come. What does all this have to do with Utah, you ask? Well, there is one phrase from the turn of the decades in the early 2000’s that we would personally like to nominate for permanence in our common parlance because it does such a good job of saying what needs to be said when no other words will do. We have decided to make it our personal name for the state of Utah. To us, Utah is the “I can’t even” state…because…well, we can’t even.
What does it mean “to even” and what would lead one to not be able to do so? Well, our favorite definition of the phrase can be found in a clip from the insightful “documentary” known as “The Juror”. It’s hard to explain it any better than she does.
However, if that definition doesn’t cut the mustard for you, nor pass muster, or make it passed any word with “must” in it – dictionary.com’s slang dictionary can clear things up. “I can’t even” is defined as, an emotional exclamation in response to an event. Its abrupt ending implies something is too amazing, frustrating, surprising, exciting (or any other adjective imaginable) to handle, which renders a person speechless because they are just so incredulous.
And, hence, Utah is the “I can’t even” state. Every new vista that exploded in colors and grandeur before us would eventually be followed by us in a fully conscious, yet seemingly catatonic state of “can’t even”ness.
Now, it is worth noting that Ryan would never actually say “I can’t even” in full seriousness, being a fully grown 53 year old man, and a dedicated child of the 80’s. But Julie would and did, over and over and over in Utah. And not just to be cute. She would utter it through the baited breath of speechless astonishment to actually express her very real limitations from a slightly bent over position, hands at the knees as a new vista of colors and shapes would explode across the panorama in front of her. But, even though Ryan would never verbally proclaim his inability to even, he could be heard, over and over, turning to Julie in her gasping state to check in on her. He would empathetically inquire, “Can you even?” – to which she would shake her head a decisive “no”.
We will try our best to describe Utah, but, well, as previously stated, we can’t even. Hopefully the pictures can…a little bit.
We’ve already seen a handful of states where we couldn’t find a spot that was absent of stark and stunning beauty. We can now add Utah to that list.
While that particular glowing burnt orange is the color that it is most famous for, Utah has all the colors, and each in its most brilliant form. It has more uniquely shaped geologic forms and layouts than we have seen all gathered in one place anywhere else, and each of them at a scale that takes whatever level your jaw has dropped to at myriad other miracles of nature and drops it a little lower and wider. It has so many amazing new shapes that new geologic words and phrases had to be created to describe them too, from the more familiar sounding ones like arches and slot canyons to the more exotic ones like hoodoos. As we have traveled the country, we have learned how much beauty is often made of water, wind and time coming into contact with something that was once solid. The way those have all converged in Utah creates one sight to behold after another.
Even the views from the gas stations and the high schools are stunning.
We got the feeling that, like every place where people live, there is a certain mixture of reveling in the particular beauty around them stirred up with the common human capacity to take something for granted because it’s just there and something one has become used to while one is busy trying to live their life. One simply can’t go about one’s life not being able to even. So, in some ways, there is a certain amount of blazé with which it is necessary to treat the awesomeness that is one’s environment on a daily basis. You can enjoy it in the background and even take moments out of your day to bask in it, but you can’t “can’t even” all day. It’s just not sustainable.
So, you mix those two together and you get daily life here in Utah. Just like every state, there are people that live there that haven’t yet gotten around to seeing the stunning features that are right in their backyard. And, there are just as many who are living here because of how much they love and appreciate the wonders around them. As visitors to the state, unencumbered by the routine pathways that accompany daily life in any one place, all we see is the remarkable backdrop that Utah provides bursting out of the background into the full spotlight at every turn. We’d say it was actually unbelievable, if we didn’t already know it was real.
So, there you have it – our best attempt to describe a fraction of the beauty we saw in Utah – and, while a decent attempt, it doesn’t really come close.
So maybe we can even…but only just barely.
R and J in the USA 
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