WHEN I WAS NINE, I moved with my family from Seattle. We had lived in our house less than a year, the shortest of all our tours of duty and one that I barely remember. I do know it rained almost every day of those nine months, causing mildew to grow on the bathroom tiles and in shoes that were not worn every day. The morning we left, while my parents once again rearranged the packed car in hopes of finding room for all of us to sit on the long drive, my babysitter stood with me on the curb saying good-bye. I cannot see her face and no longer know her name, but she gave me a terrarium to remember her by, a miniature ecosystem housed in a Sanka jar. Unlike the other gifts I had been given by friends and neighbors - the books and magazines which would only make me car sick and the clothing I would never wear, this present made sense to me, a girl for whom the smell of packing paper was as familiar as cut grass. Even though I was moving, a tiny part of the earth would be coming with me.

Though I tended my piece of the planet as if my livelihood depended on what it produced, the plants died. Two weeks in a hot car were too much for their tiny green limbs. At some point, not too far into the trip, I threw the lifeless jar into the trash, no longer caring that it remained shaded or upright.

In my memory the loss of those tiny plants has become metaphoric for the tenuous connection I have to the land. My military childhood meant constant relocation, interchangeable sets of military quarters and very little stability. I remain envious of those who have lived their entire lives in one place, can hail neighbors by name and count generations in the same house. So many of my memories are unplaced, as if the box of family photos was upturned and pictures scattered underneath the bed. I let the only piece of the planet I have ever called my own perish before we reached Wyoming.

Because I have spent so much of my life moving, I have long assumed that the only way to know a place is by remaining still. I envied my students, most of whom have lived in Utah their entire lives, and who I imagined read the land like I might a scrapbook, pausing at a river to remember a story carried in its bed. I have seen the way the land enters their writing and thinking, how it calls them home to become teachers and lawyers, how they spin metaphors from past experiences on farms or trails or mountain slopes. Their connection made me initially feel like I had little chance of ever knowing this place. more