Home is what the air smells like

There are times on the road where I don't want to talk, don't want to listen to the radio or an audiobook, don't need anything but the way the highway hums under the tires and the prairie touches the mountains, the way the mountains touch the sky. Kalispell to St. Regis, driving along the Clark Fork River. Bozeman to the Lewis and Clark Caverns, the drive where, in summer, Montana shows us her best self. Great Falls to Chester, where the road dips under the dome of sky and pheasants scatter across the highway. Havre to East Glacier, where the plains reach to the Rockies.

These are the landscapes of my heart.

I drove some of these roads this week while my family napped or read. These are the roads straight to my heart. The roads home.

Every time I return to Montana, I think about what home means. Because home, too, is where I sit tonight: in this house where I've raised my children, who are Washingtonians. We live in the Pacific Northwest, and I've learned to write love letters to blackberries and salmon and the smell of salty air. Maybe home is what the air smells like.

Yesterday morning, I woke to birds singing and the scent of mountain air: the best air anywhere in the world. The cool breeze blew through our tent. My daughter was already awake; I turned over and buried my face in my pillow, hoping she wouldn't notice me and insist we all get up. Isaac slumbered on. My kids sleep so soundly when we camp, and so do I. It's the air, the quiet, the breeze through the mountains. This is the first year in five that we haven't been rained on at least once, I think. Rain never bothers me. Falling asleep in a warm and dry tent with rain pattering (or pounding, we've had that too) on the roof is one of the deepest pleasures of summer.

The kids and I walked through the campground yesterday morning and into Apgar Village. We ate breakfast with my parents while Matt packed up our campsite. I bought a coffee for the road, and I drove us out of the park. We drove to St. Regis, snacked on free popcorn at the travel plaza, watched the rainbow trout swimming in their giant tank. I drove on to Coeur d'Alene, sipping huckleberry soda as we made our way over Lookout Pass. We ate a late lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. Matt took the wheel then, and I napped until we hit a traffic jam: I-90 was closed due to a brush fire at Vantage. We crawled along in the early evening heat until we crossed over the Columbia River. We could see where the fire jumped across the road; the posts under the guard rails were still burning. By the time we made it to a diner the kids were hungry and hot. The folks at the restaurant graciously sat us five minutes before closing, and the kids ate ravenously while the servers stacked chairs around us.

"Thank you, thank you. So much," I said. "I'm sorry if we're keeping you here later."

"It's really okay! Enjoy!" they said. We must have looked more exhausted and desperate than I realized.

We rolled into our driveway about four hours after I'd thought we would. The house smelled so good to me. The kids brushed their teeth and crashed into bed; I unpacked the suitcases and started a load of laundry. Even as a young girl, I stayed up late into the night unpacking after a road trip, unable to sleep until I'd put everything away. When I finally crawled into bed last night, I knew I'd sleep well.

"I can't believe we started this day in a tent," I said to Matt as he curled sleepily around me. "And now we're back and the kids have swimming lessons in eight hours."

One month ago we spent the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge for Suzannah's birthday celebration. We stopped at a brewery on the way home, and that afternoon Suzannah and I got matching pedicures. Mine still looks pretty good, though hers has been thoroughly battered. Three weeks ago Suzannah and I had a girls' day out in Seattle, her birthday gift from me: lunch and book shopping. Two weeks ago I wrapped up my sixteenth year of teaching and began making plans for my seventeenth.

I spent a week lounging in my backyard, reading and drinking iced tea and watching my children run through the sprinkler.

One week and one day ago we descended into the Lewis and Clark Caverns and ate popcorn from my dad's 46-year-old popcorn popper. A week ago today I had coffee with my favorite high school teacher, ate Pickle Barrel sandwiches in the park and splashed in the same pool I splashed in when my family first moved to Bozeman twenty-five years ago. Six days ago Matt and I hiked to Emerald Lake; five days ago we had a date night at the places in my hometown that have become uniquely ours. Four days ago we picnicked with my parents in Missoula and dined on trout in Apgar for dinner; three days ago we all hiked to Avalanche Lake, the first hike Matt and I took together the summer we started dating and Matt boarded a Greyhound bus to visit me for a few days. Two days ago I watched a mountain goat flop down to cool itself in a patch of snow at Logan Pass. I watched my children paddle kayaks around Lake McDonald and I swam through that clear blue water, the mountains rising just beyond. One day ago I greeted the dawn in a tent. Last night I drove through the dark of another mountain pass and wound up back at home, tucking my children into their own beds. This morning we hauled ourselves out of bed and went to swimming lessons, went to the store. I ran loads of laundry. I checked my e-mail.

Life rolls on.

Sometimes when I go back to Montana I feel like I'm taking a tour of my whole life, that I'm every age I've ever been. But returning to the life I've built here, between the mountains and the ocean, feels exactly right. It's the way the air smells here, too: the evergreens and saltwater, and the smell of home after ten days on the road.