Sitting, crouching, my knees bracing me up, my head aches after five hours sleep. This is the moment. I am the lynx, the wildcat, sexy and slinky and sharp. I think from my gut and walk like a hunter.

The lynx runs wild in northern New York and that is where I run wild, in the land of the Iroquois: Sacajawea’s homeland. We come from the same natural territory, where the trees grow thick and tall in humid clouds. The hills roll into low mountains in Appalachia. Lakes elongate into Poseidon’s fingers. Where I come from, snow grows six feet high and bullfrogs serenade me to sleep. 

My home is in Fayetteville, a village clustered into the town of Manlius near the city of Syracuse. Their cobblestones were pounded in hundreds of years ago and the Yellow Brick Road lives just a few towns away. My home is in Virginia, Juneau, Boise too, Seattle and Baltimore and even Wickenburg. My home is in Lawrence—where I never have been—and though I never felt at home in Texas or Southern California, my home is in Kilgore and Morro Bay, too. I am from New York but not of it. Or, I am of New York but not from it—just a lynx from North America.

 I once wanted to have someone else to call home. I ached to find that one person so I could sing Billy Joel’s “You’re My Home” to him. Now, even though I found him, I know that I am my own home. The equation changes again and again. I am the lynx and she is my home. Together we stretch past longtime growing pains.