In August of just last year I set out on the most important life journey of my existence thus far: college. I'm originally from a small town in Colorado called Conifer. It's a town hidden among conifer trees (hence it's name), balanced carefully on the sides of mountains, and woven articulately around the rapids of the Platte River. Before August, I lived in Conifer my entire life. I grew up in the same house in the same part of the forest, looking out my bedroom window every morning to see the same trees, the same rocks. Every afternoon was spent exploring the woods, finding creeks and riding horses on trails and up ridges. I was raised in the wild, always told to go outside if I was bored and play with sticks and stones. I attending school all 12 years in Conifer, and graduated with the same people I went to preschool with. I knew every nook, every secret that town possessed. It was mine.

I lived in Conifer for 19 years (arguably less if you count the meager time my family spent living in Boulder, where I was born), and in the 19 years I filled the town limits of Conifer with more memories than I can count. I've made many great friends, lost a few too many as well. I stargazed by the river with someone I cared for more than the rest, and I watched him leave two years later me on the bank of that same river for a life better. For a life that didn't include me. I worked jobs, I watched three boys grow up, I watched people discover the pleasure of riding a horse for the first time. I completed school, graduated on the football field my town paid for. I woke up everyday in the same bed, looking at the same sky for 19 years. Home was Conifer, and Conifer was home. It was simple, but after a while, suffocating. I was ready to leave once the opportunity arose.

I decided to attend a college 400 miles away from Conifer in a town called Hastings in Nebraska. It's a town only slightly bigger, but vastly different from Conifer. There are no forests to hide in, no streams to weave around. It's rather flat, with vast fields instead of trees. I've been here for several months and will soon begin my second semester of classes of my freshman year. At first, the idea of college was daunting and the first few days spent on campus are not ones I look back on with fondness. I didn't realize how much I would miss home until I left it. I can remember on just my second day of living in a dorm on campus, I was texting my mom in the middle of the night, begging her to turn around and come back to get me and bring me home.

However, I gradually got used to the idea of college and all the independence that came with it. I'm no longer 19 years old and a high school graduate, I am 19 years old and a college attendee. Over the last few months I've met some of the most spectacular people I think I will ever meet, I know that they will be life long friends of mine. I've discovered passion in learning that I didn't possess in high school, I've been taught by incredible professors who not only push me to do what I want, but believe that I can achieve all I want to. This campus has become my home. I love the way the brick buildings look against the streetlights late at night, I love the way the tree leaves rustle in the wind and fall gracefully to your feet as you walk beneath their canopies. I love the way the library smells, like coffee and old books. I love the church bell that goes off every hour, and then every 15 minutes in between. I love the way the train yells in the distance, and I love the way the Platte River flows nearby, just as it does in Conifer.

I now consider Hastings College to be my home and my friends here have become my family. But of course, as life would have it, the grass is always greener on the other side. There are times when I miss Conifer dearly. I miss being able to go on spontaneous hikes through the forested wilderness just outside my home. I miss being able to casually ride my horse in between classes. I miss seeing my dogs, eating dinner with my family, looking at the stars (you can't see the stars as well in Hastings as you can Conifer. There are no streetlights in Conifer). But then, when I am home, I miss the opposite aspects that Hastings contains. The ability to take a walk late at night under the streetlight glare, the seeing my friends everyday, and even the smell of feedlot that hangs in the air when the wind blows the right way.

I have two homes, as most college kids do. One exists in the past, one in the future, and both in the present. When I exist in one, I long for the other, and so I've spent a lot of time traveling between the two. It's worth it, however. I'll drive six hours either east or west to go home and there's a certain bliss in knowing that whether I am headed towards or away from the mountains in the west, I am headed home. Having two homes is, at times, a burden, but it is a feeling that I revel in. I know there will be a time in my life when two will dwindle to one, but for now I'll rejoice in the idea that wherever I am, either here or there, I am home.