Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey

I lived for summer. During the school year I searched the night sky through the branches of the locust tree out my bedroom window for Leo, my father's birth sign. As spring progressed, the stellar lion set earlier and earlier each evening. My interest was not in my dad's astrological sign but in summer vacation. When Leo disappeared over the western horizon not long after the sun set, school would soon be out and it would be time for my family's annual summer migration.

I was born and raised in Illinois, but in my mind my real home was the West, my summer landscape, where the light was clear, the land sprawled, open and endless, inviting exploration, and sagebrush perfumed the dry air. The West was sun-ripened apricots, warm and sweet off a tree; it was ice-cold soda pop at the end of a dusty hike; it was bison hooves drumming in the night and lightning bolts shooting out of a clear blue sky. It was mountain ranges as mysterious as those of any fairy-tale castle, black night skies studded with a treasure trove of stars, the rising sun tinting distant peaks rose-pink. I read and daydreamed my way through the school year. In summer, I lifted my nose out of the books and came alive, happy to follow my family's summer itinerary wherever it led, as long as that was West.

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