Volume 10: You Are Here

marked by a big red star.

Driving back from Glacier National Park this summer — somewhere in the blur of podcasts one cycles through on a 26-hour drive — a dear friend, knowing how much I adore the poet (and prophet) Ada Limón, sent me an interview from the podcast Wildcard. In it, Limón talked about her (then) forthcoming book You Are Here, a collection of prose by authors she admires, each piece a meditation on the natural world.

She explained the title: You Are Here — like the markers you find at trailheads in national parks, grounding you in place. That struck something in me. It was September. The book wouldn't be out until April (ahem, now, go get it!), but at the time I pre-ordered it without a second thought.

Fast forward to January: I took myself on a birthday date to Pearl’s, my favorite local bookshop, and there it was on the shelves — early. A gift.

The moment I ordered that book in September feels worlds away from the moment I held it in my hands. That September belongs to what my mind now divides into “before” and “after.” Before the fall’s election. Before the hospital stay. Before Dad died. Before funding was gutted for our beloved, sacred National Parks.

So many lifetimes have happened in the space between.

The 26-hour drive home came after eight days of adventures and hiking through Colorado and Montana. Limón’s words felt especially timely — we had just traipsed across more than 20 miles of trails in Glacier National Park in just a few days.

The last hike of that trip was Avalanche Trail. Near the end of the day, I noticed a nearby trail my best friend had said was a must-see. She sent me the location link titled “Trail of the Cedars,” along with a flurry of tear emojis — because she knows, like her, I cry at those kinds of things.

Halfway through, we came upon a sign and map for Avalanche Trail. A little star marked the trailhead: You Are Here. I loved that. The clarity of that star, the groundedness of it — where you are in the space and time of things. That’s something that feels increasingly hard to tether to these days.

“Just 1.6 miles,” I said to my partner. “We can get there and back before sundown!”
Ever the time optimist (dear reader — the general population might call this “perpetually late”), he relented as I skipped ahead.

Each state, each national park carries its own unique story, its own flavor. For me, Glacier National Park will always be about the memory of water.

A couple of days before that, we hiked the epic Grinnell Glacier — a trail recommended by hikers far more seasoned than me, who called it one of the most breathtaking they’d ever done. Grinnell is a testament to time: an ancient ice formation, frozen for millions of years, carving sand and stone into crystal-blue waterfalls and stair-step lakes that cascade along the trail’s every bend.

The sheer scale of it — millions of years of water circulating, shaping the land — was unfathomable.

I used to say my dad had been sick for 25 years, as if the number alone could explain the kind of knowing I carried: hospitals, pain, insurance calls, the delicate economy of time. But even in saying that, the truth was harder to grasp. The knowing I thought I had was, in many ways, a softened version — much like the eroded curves of rock or the slow retreat of a glacier.

The Grinnell hike moved between awe and disbelief with every step of its 2,000-foot climb. Avalanche Trail, days later, felt like a continuation — another kind of carrying. Water carving deep canyons for a creek that ran from mountaintop to mossy root, fueling the lush ferns and towering cedars all along the way.

Water, always present. Through every time period I once mixed up in college geology — the Cretaceous, the Jurassic, the Paleogene — and here now, running beside me, as I snapped a photo on a pocket computer that time itself could never have imagined. A piece of technology the rocks and water couldn’t care less about.

Those moments ask for a different kind of attention. The kind where you're fully present. Where you feel your own smallness in the vastness of it all.

You Are Here.

On that same trip, we visited my partner’s childhood friend, whose family had built a yurt on land brushing up against Routt National Forest. Years ago, they had assembled the yurt together over Father’s Day weekend — just months before his dad died in a tragic accident.

We spent our days there around the campfire and hiking through aspen trails carved by our friend, listening as he shared stories of his adventurous dad. (A note, if you want to read more about that grief journey read his mom Lisa’s substack here)

There’s something few people understand about grief — especially those who haven’t yet met it (because it is coming for all of us): what we, the grievers, most want is to talk about the person we’ve lost.

When I asked our friend how he stays connected to his grief, how he remembers his dad, he looked around and said, “I feel him most here.” He pointed toward a spot in the clearing and added, “I can still see him standing right there, saying the last words he ever said to me before I drove away.”

You Are Here.

He took us on what he called his favorite trail, telling stories with every turn. He pointed to the peaks surrounding us and shared how his dad had hiked them all — many of them in a single day. Not for competition. Just because he decided he would.

At the top of our more modest summit, the sun was starting to dip, painting the sky in pastels. A soft contrast to the bright white blaze of the aspen trees.

I reached into my pack, pulled out a disposable camera, and snapped a photo.

You Are Here.

In the months since my dad’s passing, there’s a question that loops in my mind like a skipping record: Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where….?

I still half-expect him to show up for breakfast, to cheer at the grandkids' track meets, to ask if I’m “still not eating meat” with that ornery little giggle. I imagine him saying, “Thanks, Dolly,” when I bring Krispy Kreme donuts or other sweets — the way I’d offer them like a golden retriever proudly carrying a bird. I still hear him calling, “Hey meggie,” from his recliner when I open the back door to the family home.

The movie Interstellar won’t leave me alone lately — a daughter, angry and mourning, discovering (spoiler) that her father has been communicating through time and gravity, sending Morse code through a bookshelf from another dimension.

Now, I don’t believe my dad is in a space portal dropping books in an effort to haunt or reach me. But he does feel… outside of time. Both completely here and somehow not here at all.

I wear one of his watches. The minute and hour hands are stuck. When I glance down, I feel oddly comforted — like the object understands my new confusion with time. It’s the only clock that tells the truth.

I know he’s still here, in the love he left behind — love that circulates now. The love he gave my mom, my sisters, extended family, friends, his employees, strangers — it’s still being passed around like light through branches.

But the ache — the real ache — is in not being able to reach him in the physical space the way I could before.

And yet, when I’m still enough, present enough, small enough, I feel him.

You Are Here.
Big red star and all.

The You Are Here series was born out of love, grief, and presence. Sixteen-by-twenty-inch giclée prints layered with acrylic paint — a tactile, visual effort to hold what’s unholdable. To honor love. To sit with pain. To learn from loss.

Each piece is built from a photo taken during my travels — moments that felt rooted in time, even as time itself shifted around me. They’re paired with poems or songs that found me in the swirl of it all — some from Ada Limón’s collection, others that simply arrived when I needed them most. I get lost in the making of these, which is a sign of true art- untangling something that I do not understand.

Together, the photos, the words, the songs — they attempt to answer that question I can’t stop asking: Where are you?

You Are Here.

A few original pieces are available online, with the full collection showing and on sale at Pretty Good Neighbors throughout the month of April.

This work is my offering — a marker on the trail. A small red star in the vastness, saying:
You Are Here.
And so am I.

xxo

-meg

Below are the poems that accompany the works: