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“Home is where your story begins” reads a plaque which is still buried in one of the many boxes waiting to be unpacked. It hung in the entryway of my Arizona house above a photograph (also still in a box) of the reservoir where as children, we used to feed ducks, catch fish and run wild. This reservoir was THE landmark in our area and the point of direction from which all things related. It was an indicator of the changing seasons, the passage of time and the last turn off of the main road leading home.

Home in those days was more than a place. Home was the settled, comfortable feeling you had deep in your bones knowing that you BELONGED. Belonged to a place, a moment in time, a tribe. Home was the arrogance of youth, the belief that you were indestructible. The sureness you felt that no matter how fast or how far you wandered you would always be able to find your way back.

That is what you believe until you hear the words “transferred again” see the map and realize that no matter how hard or fast you pedal you will never make it “back” from California. That is when you start to feel like one of those kids whose home is now the back of the milk carton; the bulletin board of the local post office. “Girl Missing. Last Seen…..” and to find that girl, to find yourself again you have to do what all good detectives do. You must go back to the beginning. To the last known sighting. You must confer with those who saw you last, who knew you best. You have to refer to grainy photographs with bent corners. You have to look at the girl, slightly out of focus in every snapshot (this is not an affront to the photographer but the direct result of an object always in motion being told to “stand still;” the barely contained energy pulsing outward, blurring her edges and smudging the lines between her and her next big adventure.) You have to remember all of the things you can’t believe you forgot.

It took me almost thirty years but last month I found my way back. I was reunited with four of my oldest and dearest friends. Friends for whom the reservoir was a compass point, a beacon, a homing device. There was an ease with these kindred spirits that comes from sharing an origin story. Even after all of these years we KNEW each other. We SAW each other. I feel like I left on my get away a woman and came back a girl.

In a writing class I took a few years ago, we were challenged to write a short memoir in the style of an author we admired. I chose Justin Torres. The piece I wrote was about a sisterhood. Having only a brother in real life, I didn’t know where the voice of the story was coming from, until I was reunited with my “sisters” and realized without a doubt it was about them and the time in our lives when the nexus of our universe was the reservoir.

A Girl’s Guide to Field and Stream

When we were young our father’s job brought us to New York.

Upstate.

Mother took calls in the bedroom, cord stretched tight from the kitchen assuring relatives in hushed tones that it was not “The City.” When we asked Father what the difference was, he replied “The Animals.”

What good girls we were. What beasts we became.

Primal. Feral. Wild.

Set free from suburbia, relocated and regressed we shed our hairbands, our shoes, our inhibitions. We grew strong and nimble. Took a step backwards. Devolved. Callouses formed, made hooves of our feet. Downy hair grew on arms and legs, bleached blonde against the berry brown of our summer skin.

We wore the forest. Clothed ourselves in layers of mud, adorned our hair with ferns, flowers, feathers.

Camouflage. Repellent. War Paint.

We drank from streams on all fours. Lapped the surface like wolves, swallowed deep like deer. Filtered grit through our teeth and tossed back the rest. We snorted, howled, pawed the ground. We earned scars that healed jagged. Constellations of freckles recorded the mythology we were creating.

We learned to roar and to be still. To read the forest floor, to track and trail. We became predators not prey.

We were not afraid.

Of words too big for us to spell or grasp or comprehend.

Pedophile. Molester. Abductor.

These were animals we deemed “city” and were as easily dismissed as their country cousins.

Lyme disease. Tetanus. Rabies.

We poked dead things with sticks. Shooed bot flies away. Popped tadpoles open, desperate to unlock the secret of life.

We developed an obsession with horses. It became all consuming in a way that would give Freud pause. We mucked out stalls, rode stable ponies bareback; steadied ourselves with fists full of mane. Dared each other to go faster. We learned to differentiate Thoroughbred from Morgan from Quarter Horse. We learned the difference between a snip and a star and a blaze. We memorized the way the chestnut (knee) connects to the cannon bone connects to the fetlock. We recited it like a mantra on nights our parents argued in heated whispers behind closed doors. Father storming out of the house before the cornet connected to the hoof.

We learned to read ice. The color and texture of it. To divine pattern and meaning from the cracks and fissures freeze framed below the surface. Learned the way it creaks and strains under pressure and weight. The way a blanket of snow tucks it in, keeps it a few degrees warmer. How an early thaw in January followed by a hard freeze can lure children on skates too far from the edge. We were not at the pond the day the boy from the city boot slid his substantial weight to the center of the pond despite the protests of the other kids and the ice. We imagined the triumphant slash confused look on his face as he went under; an ant in amber, waiting to be discovered a thousand years from now, air bubbles forever frozen just below the surface.

We learned to test limits. Of speed and gravity and patience and endurance. We heard Mother calling. Waited until her voice rose an octave above normal; hovering between control and panic, secretly relishing the moment that WE were in control. That WE decided if this night ended in celebratory ice cream or an air search before emerging from the woods.

Father would hold us tight, rub our heads, swear he could feel the nubs of horns just below the surface. Tell us our tails would be coming in soon. Ask if we had had our shots when we nipped his neck. Then he would toss us one by one into the pond. We would hover, weightless, imagine we had sprouted wings before the pull of the earth claimed us and called us home. We touched the brackish bottom, pushed down to propel up, were held fast by the suction of mud; the city boy in his winter coat clinging to our ankles.

Breaking free we were divers, astronauts unable to tell up from down. No point of reference. No touchstone. No North. We were not second prize, the sons our father never had, kittens to be drown in a sack, half formed amphibians waiting to grow legs. We were born strong swimmers. We knew instinctively to blow out through our noses. Relax against panic. Find something the opposite of gravity. Rise and break the surface.