A few weeks into my first fall semester of college, I left our library around 11pm to walk to my dorm. The New England campus was quiet. The air smelled like pine trees and old rain, and my mind was full of Robert Hass, the California poet whose words I had been introduced to in class that week.
His poems were full of droopy trees and fog-soaked mornings, and I was surprised how swiftly my longing for Oregon had gotten caught between his words, gathering like lint in a comb. The nostalgia flustered me, revealing a homesickness I had so far kept tamped down.
