Still, it is the place to which people gravitate.

About 80 percent of Utah's 2.2 million residents live along the Wasatch, a Ute Indian word meaning "low place in a high mountain" or "mountain pass." Utahns are tied to the mountains economically, recreationally and spiritually.

"For most of my life, each day began watching the sun rise from behind the Wasatch Mountains," Utah author Terry Tempest Williams wrote in an essay for the 2002 Olympics titled "A City of Salt and Granite."

"They have been my point of illumination, my security, support and inspiration. Mount Olympus, Twin Peaks and Lone Peak create Salt Lake City's eastern backdrop. I always felt I could face anything because the Wasatch Mountains were my spine."

Either way, the mountains affect how we live, work and play. And we might not even notice.

"People don't often remember how interwoven everything is," said Julia Hendrian, an East Coast transplant and outdoors enthusiast who considers life in Utah as "living on vacation."

"A lot of people have grown up here with the mountains and to some extent take them for granted."

Whether or not you ever venture into the hills to hike, hunt or ski, they affect your life when you turn on the tap, bite into a peach, pop open an umbrella or watch the sun come up.

"They are essential and vital to this whole valley," Wood said.

Water is the most essential resource the mountains provide. Without it, nothing else that Utahns enjoy is possible.

The Wasatch Mountains act as a gigantic backstop against passing snow and rainstorms. Their high summits and basins form natural watersheds.

Some 40 inches to 60 inches of precipitation accumulates in the mountains each year, filling streams and underground aquifers that quench thirsty residents and farmland.

Meantime, precipitation at the Salt Lake Airport measures about 13 inches per year, not nearly enough to whet the valley's whistle.

And "there wouldn't be that much precipitation if the mountains weren't there," said Greg Williams, state Division of Water Resources senior engineer. "It would be like 3 or 4 inches of water a year."