I grew up moving from country to country, embassy to embassy, but during my nomadic childhood I clung strongly to my identity as a Utahn, Mormon, and American. I tried to be “in the world, but not of it,” listening obsessively to Michael McLean tapes and reading Charly. But in 1997, when I graduated from the American School in Japan, my favorite teacher, Mr. Wally Ingebritson, gave me a gift—Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams. I recall feeling like my world was exploding as I read the words of a woman who could have been my aunt, my sister, my cousin-twice-removed. I began to realize that my people existed beyond the shelves of Deseret Book, embedded in the parched landscape of the American West.

So when I moved back to Utah after graduation, I tried to see all of it. With my BYU friends, I hiked and camped through Utah’s red rock. I discovered REI clearance racks; I bought Chacos; I learned to pack at least one more Nalgene bottle than one would think necessary. I absorbed the stark landscape, listening to the wind whistle over canyons and feeling the heat of stone against my cheek. I wove the terrain into my soul.

A good friend of mine, a true Utahn (born and raised in Cache Valley), frequently gave me lyrical readings that expounded on the importance of place in one’s life. “Yes,” I told her, “I agree, so true!” I did need those mountains and that arid air. I was born in Utah, and it was part of me. Me and Terry Tempest Williams, whom I would follow to the ends of the earth—whose book Red bound me even closer to the desert.

However, a part of me wondered if this specific piece of earth was really so critical to my being. Yes, the east bench of Salt Lake Valley called to me—I had been exploring it every summer of my life, following my beloved cousin Tony through the gully behind Tanner Park and up Millcreek Canyon. The parks of southern Utah were also meaningful to me—spending so many of my growing up years between those hoodoos. And yet, I’ve lived my life in many other places, too: the Wahiba Sands of Oman; the smog-filled highways of Manila; the cold damp of Dublin; the metropolitan homogeneity of Tokyo.

Eventually, this list included the humid swamp of Washington D.C., where I attended graduate school. I could tell that I didn’t belong on the East Coast, but, being knee-deep in a faith transition, my perspective on Zion had changed. I was bothered by the winter inversion, the summer brownness, and the religious tension underlying every interaction.

I interviewed for a job in Washington State one August day, when the sun shone brightly over the blue depths of the South Sound and the powdery peaks of the Olympic Mountains. The next January I moved to the Pacific Northwest where, as a welcome gift, it rained every day for five weeks. So I went to REI and bought an expensive rain jacket. All my boxes got wet as I moved them up to my second story apartment.

I started dating a guy who shocked me on our first hike by setting off without any water at all in his pack. He, in turn, laughed at the bottles upon bottles I was carrying. “We’re not going that far,” he said.  “And there’s always a stream if we get desperate.” It was true. If you stood quietly, you could hear one whispering nearby. I was no longer in arid terrain; a lush new environment surrounded me­—one that supported life at every turn.

I may have still moved back “home,” if I hadn’t married this guy who relied on streams. He had a lot of good qualities, but my favorite may have been his complete ambivalence about the LDS Church.  He didn’t know much about Mormons, he told me. Did it matter?

I moved into his house: a beautiful slice of land that abuts the end of a bay—just outside a picturesque former fishing village, one of the “best small towns in America.” Plenty of people intentionally retire to this place after having lived all over the country—all over the world. And I just fell in to it.

Here’s the thing about my new home: things just grow in the Pacific Northwest. Blackberry vines are a pest, despite providing the same fruit—unasked for and free—that the grocery store will sell you for five bucks. The first time my sister visited, she exclaimed, “Food just grows on the side of the road here?!” and then set off to gather dessert.

Once, on our way to the beach, we made an impromptu exit off the highway to let our toddler relieve himself. We pulled up next to a giant apple tree with no buildings anywhere in sight—no other fruit trees to suggest an orchard. So we ate our fill and tossed the remnants into a bush, knowing that an animal would finish the job. Best damn apples I’ve ever had.

Despite our less-than-green thumbs, our garden overflows with produce every year. My husband sows it carefully, planting enough to feed both us and the pests. Neither of us is willing to weed, and we have an organic bent, so our pest control consists of hand-to-hand combat with the slugs. We only water when we happen to notice the grass browning (about once a summer). And still, the land gives us food.

During the summer, we aim for a complete garden-to-table dinner, and a few times, we’ve actually managed it. We eat salmon our boys have caught, vegetables from the garden, and pears, cherries, or strawberries from the yard for dessert—a shocking return when you consider our paltry investment.

Sometimes I get homesick, missing that mix of warm light and cool air that accompanies the sun rising over the mountains, and I ask my husband, “When are we moving to Utah?” He always responds, “How’s the salmon fishing there?” (Utah’s trout did not impress him.)

Every Sunday, I sit in the sanctuary of the Fox Island United Church of Christ and look out on the shimmery waters of Carr Inlet. It is, without doubt, the most beautiful vista I have seen from any church. I feel God in those trees, over that ocean, and in the people around me. I no longer feel like I have to pack Her in to church with me, like a water bottle in my daypack. She is here. And so I grow, along with the blackberry vines, apple trees, dandelions, and the copious weeds in my yard. Watered by the world around me, in this hospitable land.