My entry in to national service came with the coalescence of massive forces in my life, the inescapable shadow of the global Covid-19 pandemic, the search for direction that accompanies a young graduates life after a constant experience in the education system, my drive for social justice, and my desire to redefine myself in my gender transition. 

National service through Americorps gave me the opportunity to not only act in service of communities and causes I am passionate about but to move out of my comfort zone and redefine my living situation. I was grateful to have the opportunity to commit myself to work that aligned with my values but the thing that ultimately rooted me in Montana was the natural world. Montana connected me again to the mountain range that runs through the heart of North America and in turn reconnected me to my home spiritually. 

As the Pacific plate pushes relentlessly into the North American continent, split along the North American, Juan De Fuca and Cocos plates it forms the majestic mountainscapes that define the western edge of the United States and Canada as well as the sum total landscape of the Mexican heartland. The same orogenic forces that uplifted the Montana mountainscape would also create the cradles my ancestors would be raised in, giving life to the Mexica, Huastec and Huichol people who would inhabit the areas around contemporary Hidalgo, Jalisco and Aguascalientes. Walking in western Montana gives me an unmistakable sensation, an almost eerie at times sense of familiarity. Montana is far from my homeland, 2000 miles from the largely still shores of Lake Chapala to the slow waves of Flathead Lake and yet unmistakably in rhyme and rhythm that echo home clearly, the spirit of the mountains of the Americas calling me out again and again. 

In the 1974 novel Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by U.S. author Annie Dillard, Dillard discusses the story of Xerxes on campaign in the ancient world, leading the most powerful army in the world at the time, en route to create the most powerful empire of the age, who took all his men, all his wealth, all his power and simply stopped, stuck for days in contemplation of a lone sycamore tree on the expanse.  Dillard would speculate that Xerxes managed to truly see the sycamore as it was, without any pretense and in turn imbibe the true beauty and meaning of the natural wonder of a sycamore tree.  Perhaps these mountains are my own sycamore. I could relentlessly indulge in the contemplation of them, listening to the stories they give from ages gone by, the truths of the world stored in the edges and tips. Maybe the cousins of these mountains 2000 miles away were the sycamores of my ancestors, connecting me to a legacy of mountain gazers. I can only hope the mountains will tell me their truths if I commune with them long enough, show me more of who I am and who I can be.