Why time began on Memorial Day (or, how I plan to make you care about Hannibal, Missouri)

How a ‘69 Chevy can make a kid feel like John Steinbeck

What you do when it’s 55 below zero and you live in the most maligned town in America

Why I learned to read at age 23
What I have in common with a 46-year-old, third-shift machinist

How I know God exhales over the Idaho sky

Where my heart skipped a beat: in the desert

How dipping my feet in Lake Erie scared me back to the sixth grade

What my oldest chum and my first love taught me about fashion and friendship

What mushroom soup says about my independence

Why a computer geek likes to pump his water from a well
A horse is a horse, but can a barn make a Hoosier?

My family near the water in Idaho.

TO THRIVE IN ROCKFORD, I have taken great care to search for the positives and the beauty in everything. It’s crucial, you know? Instead of seeing my surroundings as dusty fields, they are a place where I can hitch a ride with the neighboring farmer and learn about plowing and seeding. Maybe I don’t have some modern amenities, but I enjoy quietude. Instead of being lonely, I focus on growing inside.

But some places I have been recently need no positive spin. In the last year, I have been in five countries and 20 states, but two places — both right here in the good ol’ U.S., mesmerized me with their physical beauty:

• The Idaho panhandle
• The Arizona desert

Arizona, I think, is unlike any other place. Where green rules the prairies of the East and Midwest, a dusty, reddish Martian clay covers the Southwest. Grandiose mountains shadow over endless ground that always goes “crunch” when you walk on it. It’s Earth tones everywhere, but the landscape is a gorgeous wasteland like the moon.

The most ordinary stretches of land seem foreign and mystical. Outside of the big cities like Phoenix and Tucson, you feel like you’re stuck in time, because it’s so vast and undeveloped, and the vegetation is out of a Louis L’Amour novel: cacti, tumbleweeds and tufts of wild grasses sprouting like a 16-year-old’s chin.

I was there to breathe some fresh air after many months of working too hard. My friend Blaire took me all over central and southern Arizona, through Wild West shoot-em-up places like Tombstone and to the endlessly fascinating Biosphere. Along the way, we stopped at every bronzed historical marker we could find, ultimately passing out on an overdose of tourism. Every time you came near a historical region, you were sure to to be near a curio shop, beckoning you to buy a commemorative belt buckle or overpriced postcards.

While the landscape was breathtaking, it was a young lady, Yarden, who had the most profound impact on me. I’d never met her before, but suddenly she was inspiring that funny feeling where you have trouble sleeping because she’s so wonderful. In the end, it was an innocent crush, and ordinarily wouldn’t be anything to write about. But I realized it was the first time I had really felt that way about anyone in months. I’ve been so focused on work and travel that I haven’t spent any time on romance. In fact, since I started working, it’s barely occurred to me. I have dated a few people around Rockford, but my heart hasn’t been in it. Anyhow, the bad news is I work too hard and neglect the stuff that fulfils personal desires. The good news is no matter how neglectful I am, there will still people like this dear in Arizona who can break through without even trying.

Katrin, 22, skiing above ( more pictures). Jamison, 28, below. ( more pictures).

AT THIS VERY MOMENT, I’m in northern Idaho, where the outdoors has always been enchanting. It’s as intoxicating as those beautiful women I seem to have forgotten about. Last year, while sitting on the same dock I’m on right now, I wrote this as-yet unsent journal entry. I’d like to share it:

“...Right now, I am sitting in a lawn chair on a marina dock, floating 100 feet out into the majestic Priest Lake, site of most of my summers growing up. The day's finding its way into night now. In another 15 minutes what's left of the sun will be a memory, and in a half-hour the stars will sprawl endlessly across the sky, as if God himself exhaled over the horizon.

“It's been a week straight of this — my first real rest since spring break. That was in Paris and London, epicenters of civilization. But here in the mountains for the past seven days, I haven't shaved, my only showers have been from water skiing wipe-outs and I haven't even... checked my email? It's true. It's in this context that I write my third and final installment of summer musings.

“First, let me just briefly say where I am. I'm sure I'll drift into nostalgic and hopeful riffs about the place later, but very basically: I'm in the northernmost reaches of the Idaho panhandle, about 15 miles from the Canadian border. Set in the Kaniksu Mountains, I’m in a part of the Rocky Mountain foothills broadly called the Bitterroot Range, which you may have seen burning on CNN.

	Photo gallery: Newport, Washington
	Photo gallery: Coolin, Idaho
	Photo gallery: Priest Lake, Idaho I
	Photo gallery: Priest Lake, Idaho II

Luckily, Bonner County hasn't been touched by any major fires since the late 1970s, although fear is high here now. Outdoor smoking is entirely forbidden, as are fires of any kind. That means campfires and chimney fires are out; it’s a minor loss since that's one of the old family traditions here. But we forge on. There are no electric appliances allowed outdoors, which means chain saws, a logger's best friend, are kaput. You can't even take motorized vehicles off of the maintained county roads (in other words logging roads are off-limits) during the hottest daytime hours, because the county fears it's so dry that one spark from a backfire could send the panhandle to its doom. Back at home, we’re used to worrying about intangible things: jobs, bills, etc. But here, the threat that one’s entire world might be consumed by fire is very much alive.

“Our family has been coming here for four generations, so it's one of the most important places on earth to me. I've told my family for years that

should I meet an untimely end, free the doctors to harvest whatever organs they need, burn me up, say something nice and sprinkle me over the Lake. I'll consider that a sparkling exit. I could go on at length with stories about growing up here (had a little girlfriend next door, almost killed a state highway worker learning to drive, started all manner of mischief at the marina...), but you get the idea...”

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