Once upon a time,
four spinning, purposed wheels of a yellow Ryder truck guided a family of five, their dog and three cats towards a place they would never want to leave.

Gone were the smooth, manicured lawns of a golf course nearby;
gone were the country club dinners and fireworks over the 18th hole;
gone was grass so soft you could run barefoot for miles.

They arrived, and the children spent that summer exploring the old dude ranch cabins of their new world
steeped in space and freedom;

they savored the sharp smell of sage in the perfect open air
and the wild mountains and the climbing trees became their home.

They watched storm fronts pass over the rocks and hummocks of Yellowstone,
rode their mountain bikes on forever roads
and counted how many deer they saw in a day, in an hour–in a minute;
they swam in scattered ponds and let the creek calm their teenage temperaments.

In the winter,
When the family couldn’t make it up the road they spent the night in town;
their eyelashes froze together while feeding the horses
and the kids were enthusiastic skiers of the tangled hills surrounding their new refuge.

While their East Coast friends spent the summers of their teenage years
in Martha’s Vineyard
or Cape Cod,
these teenagers lifted bales of hay and rode horses—
they spotted moose and grizzly bear
and let the wind smooth their cheeks and
invigorate their souls.

And when they went away to school, and moved away
and started families of their own,
they were lucky enough to come back to that little piece of heaven—
their home–
so unmistakably and entirely a place of life and beauty
unlike anywhere else.

And they will forever be grateful
for the years they were able to know the land;
for the love that reaches beyond
the farthest glacier of Jim’s Mountain—
beyond those winter-white stars
in that lucid sky
above that familiar, faithful shingled roof
refusing to be forgotten…