
It is an easy word to say, conjuring up happy and comforting images in your mind. Something safe, protected, known. Known. Not strange, not foreign, not weird. My image of home is surrounded by mountains, wrapped in a fog that gets burned clear by a mid morning sun. My home is the smell of pine and madrone, granite and stone. The burners in fruit orchards in the fall, smoke hanging in the valley like the wind doesn’t exist, a smell that will paralyze me on a New York City street corner when I encounter it. My friends that have come from other countries have their images of home, too. Most not as nice, not as safe. But something that will cause a pause, a thought, a slight smile. a memory. But still, comforting.
We all have sensory triggers that get us. Smell is just one of them. For me, one of the strongest. Chimney smoke, chainsaw smoke, sawdust from a freshly cut snag or some dead fall. A cooking ham still reminds me of my sisters birthday in Chemult, or Bear Springs, or one of many other small Forest Service outposts of the time, in between Portland and the Idaho/Washington borders, I don’t remember which one, when we had a black bear climb up on the chest freezer in the carport, and try to claw the door open. The smells and visuals run together, photo albums and reality, memories and silver halide, combining to make me what I am.
When I lost my dad a few years ago, and more recently one of my best friends, I wanted nothing more than to go “Home”. The problem is, “Home” only really exists in my mind. I have a home, one that I have made with my family, and trying to recapture the one I left is not a reality.


“Home”.
My anchors for memories all come from out west. The first fish I caught. The first fish I caught on a fly. Forest fires. Smoke. Blood red sun. Learning to read stars to roughly navigate. The 40 degree temperature swing between day and night. What a bear smells like up close. What a Grizzly smells like up close. Knowing which way to run from a wildfire. Not to mention, play dead for grizzlies, get big for black bears and mountain lions, and if you get stung by a timber scorpion, it’ll hurt like hell for a while, but you probably aren’t going to die.
The hard times of all those memories seem to fall by the wayside, for better or worse. I have nothing but fond memories, aside from all the joking and ribbing that I got from my grandfather, of our times in Montana. Because of the trips up there, and my grandparents career choices, and just built in sensibilities, I know what a house built of cedar smells like, and that it doesn’t change, even after 20, 30, 40 years.(Right mom?) Your elbows do not belong on the table, always hold a door, and if the lady stays standing, pull out the chair for her!(thanks Nana) A bear is still a bear, whether it is in a 4 ft. culvert cage on a trailer awaiting relocation, or 20 ft. away from you on the bank of the Swan river, waiting for you to catch one or wade back to shore.(Thanks Papa)
So, where is home now? I don’t know, but I know it isn’t here. The constant din in the background of daily life is no longer o.k. But I can’t go nomad and get full on country, either. I gotta have a city of some sort close, but not right on top of me. Portland isn’t the answer anymore, either. The level of alterna-culture there drives me nuts. I’m not a rude prick, but I don’t need my grocer telling me that I am acting inappropriately, if you know what I mean. Fernie? A bit too off the map. Yaak? Way too off the map, and too shitty in the winter. Idaho isn’t going to happen, what with the Hayden Lake history and all that shite.
Fer fucks sake, I gotta land somewhere. Preferably somewhere with a trout stream in one of the yards, and a metropolis in the other. Maybe some steelhead, eh?