I grew up on a back road in a stretch of flat farmland in west-central Indiana. When school was out, the summer bookmobile was my lifeline. It would park near the railroad trestle, in a half-moon of gravel, and I would load up on novels and feel secure, knowing that when chores were done and softball games over, I had a story to read.
When I was 16, my parents moved us to Maryland. We drove through the curvaceous Appalachian Mountains. Ever after I have craved hills and mountains and travel, but I have almost always made my home in small towns or on back roads near small towns. I thought I would never go back to Indiana, yet after years of nomadic life, I did return, a little over two decades ago, and I stayed.
I live in a 19th-century brick house on a half-acre surrounded by fields where coyotes howl. I arrived here on a sweltering night in August in a Honda Civic I had driven from Montana, a red kayak strapped to the roof. I spent the last few hours on back roads, tunneling through corn. The towering fields seemed architectural, as if they would last forever.
Insects crusted up on the windshield; every 30 miles or so I would clear them off with an ice scraper. Purdue University had offered me a stint as the visiting writer and I figured when it was over I would skedaddle back to the Rockies. I cruised right on through West Lafayette, the enormous hilltop campus of Purdue, crossed the Wabash River and drove up South Street, another hill, and that made me happyβI would not have to give up rolling terrain after all.
I was asked to stay on, and I did. For the first seven years, I lived on the Lafayette side of the Wabash in a furnished apartment. Perhaps because of my Catholic upbringing and all the rules it imposed, I rolled back into my home state expecting it to be repressed and unimaginative, but I discovered its secret underbelly. I found it in candlelit solstice ceremonies and at the Depot, a gay bar, where, beneath a sparkly disco ball, drag queens danced joyously in prom gowns that would have made a sorority sister proud.
