More Than a Rock

Coming Home43

Of all the things I wondered about on this island, I wondered the hardest about the paradoxical contrast and affinity of redrock desert and turquoise ocean, the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions, as someone once said, are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.

—Ellen Meloy

It’s quiet in my living room. An afternoon thunderstorm is brewing, as they do this time of year, and the sky has darkened. The cottonwoods in the yard are swaying in the warm wind; scattered raindrops dot the window panes and the only discernible sound is my ...