Act on the Land as for Years

The last ten years have been rather transitory. I’ve moved from one apartment to another, roughly once a year, sometimes more often, sometimes less. And that’s ignoring all the nights sleeping on the ground in or out of a tent. I’m constantly starting new classes, entering new wards, adapting to new callings, and building new friendships. The last year puts all those other years of single adult wanderings to shame.

I spent 5 weeks backpacking Europe where I often didn’t know where I would sleep the next night.

I moved into government housing in a national park in California for three months.

I slept in the back of a car or side of the road many times.

I lived in three states and ultimately moved to Indiana, where I have already lived in two apartments but fully intend to stay for at least three more years.

Yes, this is the rootless wanderings of the graduate single adult. Rootless is too harsh though. I’ve always been rooted to Utah. It is my home and likely always will be. While I’ve left it many times to travel in surrounding states or abroad I’ve always come home.
Last week I was touring Nauvoo and was asked repeatedly where I was from. I often said Utah, but there were a few times where the correct answer was actually Indiana.

I’m from Indiana now. Indiana, at least on paper, has to be my home now.

Indiana.

Midwest, indistinguishable-from-Ohio-and-Illinois Indiana.

MOUNTAINLESS Indiana.

My car registration expired. I had to renew it and had to choose between driving back to Utah to pass emissions testing or registering it in Indiana. That also meant I had to get an Indiana title. And the easiest way to do that was to get an Indiana driver’s license. Which of course meant I registered to vote in Indiana.

I am a legal resident of Indiana now. At least in the government’s eyes (the school doesn’t seem convinced because they get to charge higher tuition for out-of-state students).

I had to take my red stone arches off of my car and put on the covered bridge.

How intrinsic was Utah to my identity? Am I still Riley if I am so far from the redrock and mountain peaks of home?

Can Riley be a Hoosier?

Does that mean I have to love this land now? I have to appreciate the endless cornfields and towering trees which line every creek? Do I have to love the expansive sunsets which ignite the late evening thunderstorms rolling across the prairie? Do I need to rejoice in the Tenderloin sandwiches, endless small town festivals, and slow winding rivers? Can I find beauty in the sparkling graveled creeks and hundreds of species of fish and possums and raccoons on every corner and feeling that the land is bursting with such abundant life that it not only feeds the residents but many thousands that live in places less hospitable to farming (like Utah)? Can I love the small farming towns and open generous people and unassuming humility of a people that love their land despite of its short comings? Can I love the dancing fireflies and singing geese and prancing deer and chirping frogs that refuse the notion that this land has lost its wild nature, even under the centuries of the plow? Can I love the old houses and practical mindsets that carved these cities from the endless eastern forests?

I don’t know. But I can acknowledge that there is a lot of things to love about this land. And I will thrust in my sickle, unpack my bags, and live here as though it were my home forever. And in that devotion and commitment it will become my home.

And Hoosier will become part of who I am.

(But I’m not giving up the Utahan in me)