Home Land

From California to Montana, the scent of memory haunts me still.

When I moved to Montana more than twenty years ago, “home” for me still smelled of orange blossoms, a sweet whiff that conjured the utopic image of small-town Southern California: familiar faces, fruit and vegetable stands on corners, orange groves gently rising to dun hills and big blue mountains. That scent is warm twilights practicing tennis on the high school courts. It’s watching sunsets from the little gazebo my parents built on the hill in our backyard that looked out across the tumbleweed field beyond. The groves were torn out to make way for track housing. And yet. The scent reminds me still.

So too does the hot musk of rare rain on sage and pavement. And goddamn, the salty brine of the coast. That smell is the cove in Laguna with the mean beach break where my sister and I learned to swim in the ocean, where my dad carried us out on his back past the foam; it’s shirley temples at the dockside in Dana Point after sailing on our tiny sailboat. It’s vague memories, like a horizon veiled in sea mist, of my parents putting us to bed in the tiny forward berth on that boat and falling asleep to gentle rocking and the slap of sea against the bow.

And under the scents of memory, my California is movement. It’s a muscular land pushing against itself. It’s earthquakes in the middle of the night and diving for doorways, cracks in the wall, dust billowing from far mountains, bathtubs filled with water, just in case. It’s toting that ziplock bag full of non-perishable snacks, labeled with your name, on the first day of school to hand over to the teacher. Just in case.

California to me is dust and heat and smog. Salt and sand and waves and powerful earth.

I meant to return to it those twenty years ago. I did. After all, I would never be “from here” the way born-in-Montanans were “from here.”

The land, though, had the last word.

From my essay “Home Land” in Camas Magazine. Such an honor to be the 2026 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer and be offered space in the publication of my alma mater. Support burgeoning writers by ordering the issue with the full essay here.