The Long Way Home

There was a time when I thought I’d never leave Missoula.

When I first landed there at age twenty-four, I knew little of who I wanted to become—and feared that the little I actually was wasn’t enough. I did know that I was a sister, and that I’d lived too far apart from mine for too long. She’d traversed improbable latitudes north from our Southern California hometown for graduate school in Montana and never looked back. At her generous invitation of a cheap room in her house, I drove my compact Ford Focus up through the windblown West to Missoula one November, looking to spend three or four months of winter there during my off-season from teaching outdoor education. A child of saltwater and thirsty ponderosa forests, I’d never “spent a winter” anywhere with actual winter.

Perhaps I was looking for more, in that way we do without knowing that we’re