Growing up in McCall, Idaho meant swimming to the No Wake buoy, racing along the bottom of the lake, and spending summers in the mountains. This reflection on leaving and returning home explores how distance changed her relationship with the mountain town that raised her—and why its wilderness kept calling.

On a recent run, moving from sunlit sagebrush into cool forest, effort sharpened my focus and quieted everything else. In the mountains, the body tells the truth, and I’ve learned to protect the joy of moving by refusing to turn it into competition—slow the fuck down. Somewhere between strain and stillness, movement becomes a way of seeing, and eventually, a way of being.

There’s a strange kind of clarity that comes when your life has to fit into two bags. Not just practicality—but perspective. Each item becomes a decision: not just “Do I need this?” but “Does this still belong to the person I’ve become?”

Ever walked into your house on a summer afternoon and felt like you’ve just entered a pizza oven? That’s me—sweaty, sunburnt, and furious at my walls for storing heat like it’s gold. Meanwhile, my mom in the Rocky Mountains is toasty in winter with no heating bill. Her secret? A design trick called passive solar. Turns out, working with the sun (instead of fighting it) can make your home way more comfortable—and a lot cheaper to run.

I didn’t expect a dead sheep to be the turning point. But standing over an offal pit on a quiet Sunday, gutting a 80-kilo ewe with a kitchen knife, I realized: I was in way over my head. My dream of living sustainably had turned into a reality I wasn’t prepared for. That moment sparked a new idea—a “30-kilometre rule”—that changed how I shop, eat, and see my place in the world. This is a story about dead sheep, local peaches, plastic-free shampoo, and the power we hold in every purchase.