The Story of Where You Came From

How do you tell yours?

     Will you sit by the fire some decades down the road with some big Irish Wolfhound and calloused hands, wind-and-sun-bleached blonde hair that has aged to the platinum palate of your mother's, telling stories of the Coast Starlight that took you through the Cascade Mountains to where there was winter evening light and ospreys preying on skinny seagulls---where you marveled at frost on spiderwebs and wondered why you'd never seen this before in Pennsylvania? 

Will that be the reason you ended up in the Pacific Northwest?

Wish I'd brought my camera with me...google cred for this guy.

Will you tell of your summer wrestling shorebirds into sheets to draw their blood, to force-feed them O.brand carnivore powder in warm water (you never figured out what it stood for), of the drives along the roads in Point Reyes with pelicans in dog-kennels in the back of your first car, that silver Toyota, and the people you met the hours you worked at the Oakland Zoo?  Will you tell of running in the fast-moving fog under the Golden Gate bridge?

Will this be the reason you don't give up until you make it in to vet school at U.C. Davis?

I can take some credit for this one. Point Reyes.

The listeners on the rug in front of you may wonder why, if you grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, why you are telling these stories of L.A., of the Bay Area, of Brittish Columbia and Vancouver and Ecuador and Costa Rica and Wisconsin---

They are also the places you have come from, where you have been made in some way or another. 

Growing up and travelling and that internal forge. 

Where do you come from?

Who have you been?

Who are you now?