Where’d I grow up?

Where did I grow up?

I have lived in as many houses as years I’ve been alive. So when I tell someone, “I grew up there.” I’m usually picking a location that I resonate with at that moment and it could be; Utah, Arizona or Alaska.

Born in Idaho, I lived for a time there, before moving to Utah and from there to Arizona and from there back to Utah only to get transplanted in Alaska before choosing finally to move to Oregon.

Each of these locations were fundamental blocks of time in childhood development. So to say, “I grew up there” I am usually referring to a developmental section of five years.

I usually think of Arizona as my barefoot –wild child days of running around in the desert, gathering lizards, playing football and watching electrical storms during the monsoons. Those years were elementary school days of hot asphalt, prickly pears, my first attempts at poetry and the conviction that I would be the first female quarterback in the NFL.

I associate Utah with the days of surviving the Mormon bubble- forced to wear dresses to church, days of gardening, farming and raising animals. The restriction of the church, general unhappiness – the beginning of puberty. Being a basic outcast, not fitting in with peers and developing a fairly large chip on my shoulder about my independence.

When my mother packed myself and my three brothers and dog into a car and drove to Alaska one summer, I was certain at the time she was trying to outrun herself and simultaneously punish us. But now, in later years I am beginning to understand her random act may have saved me from becoming a totally emotionally crippled child in the pressure of the Utah vacuum.

So it was that we found ourselves driving to Alaska in a barely-running Pontiac with no particular destination. It is when we settled in Valdez, Alaska when I was 14 that I believe my evolution as young adult and woman truly exploded. In a world as epic as Alaska there were no real boundaries, obstacles or consistent supervision and I spent my summers hiking, kayaking, white-water rafting, doing theatre, writing, music, arts, dungeons and dragons, road trips, hunting and fishing and in general… exploring nature and for the first time in my life – stretching myself until my spirit could finally fit into my body.

My days in Alaska are remembered in friends, adventures, snow banks taller than my head, days of total darkness, days of total sun, bears, wilderness, rivers both malignant and benign, crystal waters, glaciers and mountains shrouded in mystery and possibility, ice and hurricane winds, 2am bonfires during daylight to roast marshmallows. How could I not, under those conditions, flourish? Who would not grow up with a sense of magic, gratitude and a sense of Epicness?

I love Alaska. To this day my soul belongs to Valdez. It’s nestled there at the end of the road, against mountains were it’s sheltered by wild blueberries and the occasional errant moose. It is swaddled in snow under the glow of northern lights by winter and blooms ferociously in the summer in fields of fireweed.

I have found a home in Portland, which I LOVE. My heart is happy here and free to be a force upon the world. But my soul will forever be an Alaskan girl with Sitka spruce spring in her hair and scrapped knees from climbing mountains or charging rapids.