There are only a handful of places, maybe 3 or 4, that I can truly call Home. Perhaps it’s contradictory to state this in a newsletter where I aim to push the boundaries of the definition of “Home”, but physical locations hold so much more than just the physical. I know they are home because of how much it hurts to not be there, with those people, at that time. (How you gonna know the feeling ‘till you’ve lost it?) I haven’t written about all of these places yet, but each evoke in me a whole-body, nostalgic ache, sometimes more than just a misty longing for the past and a place that doesn’t fully exist anymore, not in the way I wish it did.
On August 1, 2003, I landed in Flagstaff, Arizona. Thus began an identity-shaping chapter in my life, one whose lessons still resonate almost two decades later. It took a leap into a beautiful and foreign place to jumpstart my real adulthood—or whatever that means when you’re 24. I can forever sympathize with people in their twenties: I know how important it is to have a scene because I had one, too.
Now, when I think about that time, I'm in awe of the way I overcame all the little challenges I faced and how each one worked to rebuild me into something newer and stronger, someone who was absolutely in love with a whole new environment, one whose smells and feel I can now recognize instantly.
But once, it was new and unfamiliar. Once, it was lonely, and I was homesick for everything that came before. Over time and with a lot of help, it became comfortable and utterly familiar, a place full of people and experiences that turned, in some ways, into my favorite home of all.
Let’s go back to the start.
Arriving in a new place
To a newcomer, Arizona can seem, quite literally, like another planet. I had decided to move there because I wanted the shock of a new start; like so many others, I’d become entranced by the mythical notions of what it would be like to live “out West.” Setting aside all the missteps and truly terrible history of colonization, there’s no substitute for the impressiveness of the vast, changing landscape, the muted colors of rust and bone, the endless sharp blue sky, the sun, that relentless burning captain of optimism.
My friend Maureen once boldly proclaimed that “Arizona is the most beautiful state”, and she’s got a strong argument. The sixth-largest state in the union, it traverses an incredibly diverse landscape. The Grand Canyon to the northwest, the Hopi and Navajo reservations in the northeast, the prickly desert in the middle (and the south, and spread all over, really), the White Mountains, full of pine, to the east, with the Painted Desert in between them. Those iconic red rocks and vortices of Sedona, perched like magical desert sirens, inviting us to come closer. And this is just the start—there’s so much more to discover.
Northern Arizona, where I would be, is home to the largest contiguous Ponderosa Pine forest in the world. It’s surprisingly green! Not a lush green, like in the Carolina of my past or the Vermont of my future, but green nonetheless. I didn’t know what it meant to be a “four-season town'' (I’d always lived in four-season towns; we just didn’t call them that), but it snows here, sometimes a lot. And then the sun comes out and melts it all away, and that’s my kind of winter.
In addition to those Ponderosas, willows, cottonwoods, and quaking aspen bring a gold rush in the fall, adding to the already picturesque landscape. The lovely, hulking San Francisco Peaks are visible from the air and a hundred miles away, and are at their most beautiful with their splashes of autumn yellow. A quiet volcano that was once higher than Mount Rainier, the Peaks are now about 12,000 feet high. They’re also a big part of why I (and many others) chose to move to Flagstaff, or for those who have been here for centuries, a reason to stay (this link takes you to a list of the dozen or so Indigenous names for the Peaks—there’s a lot more to their stories than I can possibly tell).
My mom and I arrived in town after driving a modest Budget truck just under 2,000 miles in 5 days. We stayed in hotels and motor lodges along the way, the exact same route I traveled in 2020 in Drive, Part 1. We watched the ducks process at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, looked out solemnly at the Oklahoma City Memorial, and swung through Petrified Forest National Park. I swam as she read by the pool on a sunny afternoon at our motel in Amarillo. We talked about the new experiences I would have ahead of me and the romantic relationships I was leaving behind; she had her favorites. That trip with my mom, having her come along, meant the world to me as I transitioned from my old life into my new. She stayed in Arizona for about a week before hopping on an Amtrak for the reverse trip back home.
Her home. Not mine, not anymore.
I had accepted a job as the Director of Faith Formation at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, where I would direct the church’s youth and education programs. I’d earned a Masters in Religion for this very reason, although my six summers on staff at a Lutheran camp had also prepared me for this. I wasn’t worried about the job; I knew that part would go well.
And while I was excited about this new chapter, there was certainly trepidation, too. It felt a lot like going off to college, but far bigger than anything I’d ever done before. When I arrived on the Wake Forest campus six years earlier, it was a new world and it was scary, but the safety of the college bubble was easy. Now I would be living thousands of miles from familiarity, like I’d fallen inside a new universe. I’d spent all my life up to that point surrounded by my family and my peers, and it was a brand new feeling to be thrust out into the real world without that safety net.
A transition period
But that wasn’t exactly the case. I had a lot of help getting started, thanks to the network provided by the church. I stayed with a parishioner, Donna, for the first couple of weeks, a lovely and energetic elderly woman who had a spare bedroom. Another parishioner, Ginny, was a realtor and drove me around town to check out different apartment complexes, and I ended up renting a basement studio from another parishioner, Margaret, who lived upstairs with her daughter, a high school senior in the youth group. For my 24th birthday, Margaret and her daughter gave me a sweet little plant and a slice of Safeway birthday cake, and while the kindness may have seemed small, it meant a whole lot to me.
My old life and the new collided almost immediately with a visit from my friend from Columbia, Tim. Tim’s brother and his brother’s boyfriend lived in Phoenix, and they drove up to Flagstaff, picked me up, and we all road-tripped to Las Vegas for a couple of days. We crammed into a modest motel room and casino-hopped, playing cheap Blackjack, where I won $75 and day drank in this neon desert paradise. Having that fun time with Tim in a totally outrageous new place was amazing, and my first visit to Vegas will always be my favorite visit to Vegas.
In addition to Tim, I had a dozen dear friends, guys and girls, who I called regularly. My journal during this time is strewn with recaps of those meaningful conversations. Because of the distance, those interactions were deeper and richer, undistracted by the day-to-day. But my homesickness, too, was deep and extraordinary. I’d chosen this move, but I’d left close friends, family, and (most importantly, or so it seemed at the time) several burgeoning relationships two thousand miles away. I would question myself almost daily: Have I done the right thing?
Making friends from scratch
I was comforted by some sage advice from Jason Mraz: I won’t worry my life away. I learned how to live by myself and enjoy it. In my studio just north of downtown, I would cook elaborate meals on my mini-stove (I fondly remember a totally-from-scratch chicken noodle soup), read books and drink tea on my futon, and take long, luxurious baths. I didn’t have a TV, but some nights I would stay in, drink Pyramid Hefeweizen, and work on my camp scrapbooks. It was blissful.
And also lonely. I needed to create situations in which I could meet people and make friends, and my best idea was to go out to bars. I would pre-party with a couple of those beers and my little boombox stereo. Then I would make the 5-block walk downtown to a predetermined bar, and get a drink and sit by myself and sometimes watch a band until someone said hello.
My first time out was to the Monte Vista Hotel. The Monte V is a magical place. The bar is in the basement of a haunted old hotel and is two levels, with a glossy bar in a narrow room and a stage on the lower level, and pool tables and another bar up above, walls a saturated red with dragon stenciling. Earlier that week, I’d read about a decent-sounding band playing there, and I wasn’t just going to sit at home by myself on a Friday night.
I’d had a hilarious, pathetic, hilariously pathetic idea: buy two beers and fabricate a story that I was meeting someone who never showed. I sat there, pretending to be sad (did I have to pretend?) until someone noticed and pumped my ego with sympathy about how it was a shame that such a cute girl got stood up. My stupid plan worked! I don’t think it was nearly as strategic as I thought it would be, and I only did it that once. I just didn’t want people to think that I’d shown up there alone. Because that, to me, seemed far worse than the fake story.
I wasn’t really looking for guys, per se, though I did meet a few of those. But I met girls, too. The first friends I made were a trio of roommates: Alex, Erin, and Matt, and they were somewhat new in town, too. I went out with them collectively and also individually—to a party at Alex’s sister’s house, to a Willie Nelson concert in Sedona with Erin, even on a date with Matt. They were a lifeline, a bridge. Even though I lost touch with them not long after, I remember how we all had to be somewhat vulnerable at this time, putting ourselves out there with the unspoken question: Will you be my friend?
After a while, I figured out which bars I liked best (the Monte V, of course, and then Mogollon Brewery, although their beer wasn’t very good) and which bands I wanted to see (Skanksters!), and then going out by myself was not as intimidating as it initially was, and faces started looking familiar.
The moment everything changed
Even though I was 24 and had been done with college for a whopping two years, I was constantly mistaken for a student. I wanted to be taken seriously as an adult, which felt like it was never going to happen, what with my eternally youthful looks and joie de vivre yet unhampered by the ruins of real adulthood.
Northern Arizona University was the school right in town, and I hadn’t given it much thought, because all those students were waaaaay younger than I was, and I needed to live my adult life. I went to bars! I had my own health insurance! So when I kept being told to go to an evening service at NAU’s Lutheran Campus Ministry, I resisted and resisted. I also needed a life outside of church stuff, because heaven forbid (heaven forbid!) people think I was a stodgy super-Christian girl. And I know I worked at a church and all that, but I was not.
Someone finally convinced me to go. At that first service, I saw people of all ages, even some of the older adults from my church. I was clearly not the oldest person in the room after all. The pastor spoke, we went through the paces of the liturgy, and then it was time for communion. People lined up quietly as notes of recorded music began to swell. I looked toward the front of the room. A girl in a red leotard performed a sublime liturgical dance as people waited to receive the bread and the wine. I was intrigued by the dancer and how she appeared confident and comfortable, smiling as she danced, her art adding to the sacredness of the moment. I’d never seen something like that at church before.
Afterwards, while milling around, I got introduced to all sorts of people as “the new Youth Pastor'' (my reputation preceded me, it turned out). One of them was a guy about my age, who I recognized from the church directory. His name was Craig, and he was back living in town after finishing up college in Boulder. “You should meet my girlfriend, Rachel,” he said. A girl walked up and put her arm around him. It was the dancer.
Do you remember moments that are meaningful, how they become clearer and clearer as time goes by, when they’re etched in your mind as Significant Moments even though you may not have known it at the time? A moment that may have been fleeting becomes sharper and more beautiful, because the weight of it overtakes the simplicity?
It was an incredible gift: I didn’t know it yet, but I had just met my best friend.
Rachel and Craig invited me later that week to Barnes and Noble to drink tea and play Quibbler. Then to watch Monday Night Football and drink beer at San Felipe’s, and then Granny’s Closet, which became our Monday night ritual for that next whole year. Then Rachel and I started writing a play together, and I invited her to go to an REM concert with me in Las Vegas. We spent the 8-hour drive there and back talking about our lives, past relationships, hopes and dreams, and the rest is history.
Getting to know my new hometown
The pastor and his family did several nice things for me in the first few months in town, including letting me stay at their house for a few days early on, between my arrival and when I moved over to Donna’s. They also took me out to dinner and presented me with a gift bag of various Arizona-y things, which included a book of nearby day hikes.
On a sunny Saturday that fall, having already pored over the many different hiking options, I set out on my own on the Brookbank Trail, in a section of the Coconino National Forest north of town called the Dry Lake Hills. The landscape is defined by rocks and dirt and hills, but where were the lakes? Were they dry? I never knew. It wasn’t that monumental of a hike; there was no incredible view, but neither was there any sort of disaster. It was the journey itself that was big. It was my first Arizona hike, and the start of many more to come.
When I wasn’t at the church, going to bars, on hikes, calling friends, or reading at home, I would wander around downtown, spending some of my newly-earned cash at the coffee shops, stores, and restaurants around Heritage Square, the literal “town square”. Stores like Rainbows End and Black Hound Gallerie appealed to my crossover hippie/punk aesthetic, and I could wander into a narrow Gopher Sounds, wood floorboards creaking beneath my feet, and search for an elusive used CD or new one. (For me, that store will always be remembered as the place where I bought my underwhelming first–and last–album from The Strokes). Lunch could be a portobello burger from Charley’s or a housemade (i.e. tasty-but-oh-so-crumbly) veggie burger from Flag Brew, and it was around this time that I started hanging around Late for the Train for afternoon coffee and poetry writing. Sometimes I’d meet Rachel there, sometimes I’d just make friends with the barista and chat, but after 18 years of nonstop schooling, having some leisure time was heavenly.
Twenty years and a few towns later, I still love a good downtown meander.
Home Sweet…?
My life was getting all filled up: the daily business of working and being an adult, exploring my new home state, Granny’s Closet on Mondays with Rachel and friends. I didn’t care about the football (though this would be the year of my peak football knowledge, which I’ve since lost) but we had a favorite server, Anna, and we sure drank a lot and laughed even more.
Church and youth group kept me busy. I’d helped design the Adult education for the fall, taken the high schoolers on a camping trip in Oak Creek Canyon, and directed the Christmas play (a bootlegged version of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and lo, it was adorable). It was my first “real” (full-time) job, and I truly enjoyed it. Everyone was welcoming and supportive. While I missed all the kids I’d gotten to know over the years as a camp counselor, I was starting to connect with these kids, and it was all pretty great. You’re not supposed to have favorites, but mine was this one punk kid who was always questioning why his parents forced him to go to church. We had honest conversations about doubt and belief, and I daresay he respected me more for not feeding him shiny happy falsehoods.
Because I worked at a church and Christmas was a busy time, I planned to spend the holiday in Flagstaff. I decorated my studio apartment with greenery that the youth group was selling. The play that Rachel and I had written was performed by LCM students at a well-attended holiday event. I’d received dueling invitations to spend Christmas Day with a family from the church (who happened to have a flirty son about my age) and with the family of my new “boyfriend” (we weren’t even calling it that yet) from the Monday night football crew. I said yes to both, hopping from the church family’s shindig (where I won at poker) to my boyfriend’s parents’ house, grateful for the company but also completely unmoored, since it wasn’t my traditional Christmas and I missed it so much.
At the end of December, I flew back to South Carolina to visit family and friends. It had been five whole months since I’d left, the longest I’d ever been away, which felt like a lifetime. I traveled all over the Carolinas, from Charleston on the coast to Boone way up in the mountains, going to parties and laughing and crying and kissing and hugging and being grateful to be blessed by a community that knew me and embraced all that I was. Spending time with them was a balm, and I had missed this deeply.
But on a January day in 2004, when I touched back down at Phoenix Sky Harbor, I was happy. In about a month, I’d be moving into a small house closer to downtown with Rachel and our friend Emily. I had a membership to the local climbing gym. I had plans to finally visit the Grand Canyon, and was orchestrating a lock-in for the middle-schoolers soon. Life felt really good.
Every day, I would look up at the Peaks, in awe of their incredible stories, of which mine was becoming a part, utterly thankful to be right here in this place, at this moment in time. And every night, the ever-black, starlit sky would shepherd me into dreams.
A growing fearlessness nibbled at me, warming me with its power. I had found myself. I was home.
Reflection questions:
Where did you live in your early twenties? If it was close and familiar or far and unfamiliar, why did you make that choice (if you had one)?
Was there ever a time in your life when you took a big leap and doubted yourself? What did you do next and why?
Are you still friends with the people you met in your early twenties? What kind of relationship do you have with them now?
Northern Arizona and the Flagstaff area are home to many Indigenous tribes: the Havasupai, San Juan Southern Paiute, Hopi, Diné (Navajo), Hualapai, and Kaibab-Paiute peoples have all lived here for centuries. Many others are deeply connected to this area. Here is a map of federally recognized tribes across the state.
Image: Roomies! (Me, Rachel, Emily). Spliced with somewhere in Sedona.
Intersections of delight:
Sister Lutheran, I'm a PK, my mom was the organist, and generally everything else that goes along with life as a Lutheran. For decades now - starting about the time you describe in this piece and I was hiking Sedona for the mystical power of its energy vortex - I've been saying I'm no longer Lutheran by faith but will always be Lutheran by culture. ;) I was 18 when I moved to San Francisco and was quickly enfolded into the church in ways that sound a lot like your experience.
Sedona. Preferably in the 90s but you still got there at a great time, before it became too developed.
Jason Mraz. Yes Yes and Yes!! The old stuff and the new stuff. His lyrics pretty much express the foundation of my theology these days.
nice to know more about your journey!