If you’ve never been to Billings, Montana, you might not know about the Rimrocks. 

I had no idea about them before the day I drove into town. I had a vague idea of what the geography was like closer to the Rockies, and when I looked at a few google images of Billings as I was preparing for the move, it didn’t seem like anything special. The rocky cliffs around the city matched my expectations of what mountains are like, real mountains. My experience with mountains before was mostly of the granite peaks of the Adirondacks, and some vague memories of a family trip to Glacier when I was 12. I was not prepared for the experience of living with them.

I grew up on the northern edge of the Tug Hill Plateau, which is not a real plateau. Directly south of my childhood home is a gentle hill on which our neighbor farms corn for his cows. At the top of the hill begins a dense forest of pine and fir and hawthorn-apple brambles. This hill is so gentle that you can’t even sled down it during the winter. The sled will just sink into the snow with you on it, and you will sit there in the cold, unmoving, before hiking back down to the house on foot. The edge of the “plateau” is a transitory place for the things living around it. Deer and wild turkey walk out of the forest into the cornfield to pick at whatever is left over from the harvest, my dog will chase them back into the trees, and I will trudge up at a slower pace trying to convince him to come back to the house before it gets dark. For most of my childhood it was filled with wild grasses rather than agriculture. 

All around Billings there are slopes. Steep ones. The one I come face to face with each day is directly north of most of the city (some of it is sort of on top of this Rim). I don’t quite live at the very base of it, but I live pretty close, and it is a constant presence in my mind. 

Somedays it feels like a wall. Trees grow sparsely along the ridges. I think they are fir trees, but it’s hard to tell from a distance. I’ve been living here for two months now and I still have not been to the top. 

I’ve come to appreciate it at other times. 

On the first day I moved in, my family tried to go out to eat after carrying all my furniture into my new apartment. We ended up lost, and moving faster than Apple Maps could direct us. That’s when I looked out the window at an unfamiliar wall of rock, and I told my dad “Just drive towards that!” I remembered the oppressive weight of the cliff side from my new home, and though it was still uncomfortable, it had already become the center of my mental map. 

Just walk towards the Rim. You will find home eventually.

Before my second week living in Billings was even over, my dog was attacked by another dog while we were walking. It was mid-day. I remember I had decided to stop at a bbq food truck for lunch. It had been a good day. The other dog had escaped from somewhere, and wasn’t meant to be outside off-leash for obvious reasons. My dog escaped with very minor injuries thanks to the help of several strangers who stepped in. I am extremely grateful for everyone’s help that day, but I was still shaken by it. Thinking about the 40 minute walk home, I was tired. My cell data was slow. I just didn’t want to use Apple Maps to get a route home. It felt like too much energy.

So I walk towards the Rim instead.

I’m still a bit homesick, but I’ve discovered that I like flathead cherries. I like Soda Station. I like frybread. I like the people at the emergency animal hospital, and the people at Ace Hardware. I like all the native gardens at the zoo, and that they have toys in the red panda exhibit that are the same as the ones I get for my dog. I like that I can still find Stewart’s soda at the grocery store. I like living in a place that has enough people for trick-or-treating. Most of all I like the people I get to work with. They are kind, and wise, and I admire them immensely. They do so much for the many remarkable students we work with. My only hope is to help in the ways I can already, and to get better in the ways I need to.

I will find home, eventually.