Who From High School?

As a high school teacher who was once a high school student, I am interested by the deep and everlasting connections we make to the people we grow up with. Watching young people discover, deny, embrace, denounce and struggle with who they are and who they want to be is fascinating. It is not uncommon for me to think certain kids would make wonderful friends to one another if high school was not so much about obeying the small-town, societal rules and guidelines set either in elementary school or earlier still, by parents during their own youth. My high school experience was no different.

I grew up in North Rumford, (not to be confused with Rumford proper) north of the mill, near Andover, in the foothills of the Mahoosic Mountain Range. Geological beauty is everywhere - cliffs that cling to the treed sides of small and distinct mountains - the Ellis River winding around and around itself through fields of hay and old corn - morning fog created by the Ellis that lifts up over the small mountains after it has hung there, halfway in between the river and the sky - the old, wide and mostly straight Androscoggin River, ever constant for so many years - years when it carried travelers up and down and across to trade and visit.

Out where I grew up, there is a tradition -- a tradition that goes far back into New England history -- where families do not move far. Often sons and daughters purchase land from parents and build on land that once made up the original tract. The house where I grew up is a fence-line and field from my grandfather’s house. My aunt and cousins’ house is directly across the street. Down the road the tradition continues. Heather and Heidi were girls I grew up with - their grandparent’s house is the next one down from theirs, and their aunt, uncle and cousins’ house is the one after that. We grew up riding bikes, swimming in the Ellis, playing baseball, riding horses and learning how to cook for one another. So much of what we did was outside, in nature, using our imagination to avoid boredom. We rode the bus together, went to school together and always remained friends. Throughout our youth, we respected one another in a way that comes from growing up together, sharing experiences, family fights, troubles, teachers, coaches, gains and losses. As we grew up, interests and opportunities changed us; we found others who shared the same interests, and we began to hang out with them more than our childhood friends. But as we went about our new and exciting, yet separate, lives (some as cheerleaders, others as ski racers) we always kept a special place for one another. We lost touch, spent far less time together, but always remained connected.

There is something about where we grew up that fosters two pronounced and contrasting needs: a need to travel and a need to root in and stay close. Maybe it is the physical beauty of the place that pushes us to seek more natural beauty, or that same beauty that pushes us to stay and enjoy the beauty that is perennial to our valley. Maybe it is the amount of time one spends alone when growing up in the country that urges us to remain independent and to strike out on our own, or to stay and revel in the solitude and privacy. Maybe it is the amount of time we spend outside, enjoying the elements, playing in them, that causes us to include the natural world in everything we do for enjoyment. My brother is the traveler, the one who left and stayed gone. Heidi and Heather have always stayed; Heidi now lives in the house she grew up in. I am a blend of the two, and I just learned this summer that Heidi and Heather’s cousin, Kati, who grew up just a 1/2 mile away, is like my brother; one who moved and made her life somewhere far away.

I have headed west to live, only returning because I ached for the geology of Maine and the closeness of my family. My brother moved out west 16 years ago and still only returns for visits.

This summer I packed my car, loaded my dog Luna and and headed back west. I was going there to visit all the places I remembered and loved as well as my brother and his new family. I used to live in Tetonia, Idaho, and my brother lives in Big Sky, Montana. To get to Big Sky from Eastern Idaho, you must drive through West Yellowstone, MT. There is a shop there called “Free Heel and Wheel.” It is owned and operated by women and sells gear for two sports I love most: biking and skiing. They run a coffee shop too, and I always make it a point to stop there and buy a little something.

On one particular drive from ID to MT I was dangerously tired - I had stayed up most of the night and morning visiting with my old friend, Blue. It was warm in the car, and I was drowsy. I knew I needed caffeine, so I planned to stop in West for a pick-me-up. As I drove down one of the main streets, I saw a coffee bar on the side of the road. They were selling frozen coffee drinks, and I thought I would try it instead of heading to Free Heel and Wheel. This place was right on the way, not the block off the main drag like Free Heel is. But something told me to go to Free Heel -- it probably had to do with my love for the shop and the women who run it -- something to do with knowing I would get exactly what I wanted at Free Heel -- something to do with the nostalgic theme of the whole trip, knowing I had only a finite number of times to enjoy the place -- and it most certainly had something to do with fate, history and timing.

I headed down Main Street and pulled up to the shop, went in and ordered a frozen mocha coffee drink. While I was there, a girl who worked there caught my attention; she looked incredibly familiar -- carried herself the way a girl I grew up with did. I watched her without being creepy and was in awe of the resemblance to this girl I knew in my childhood. She had a baby on her hip and was in and out and around the shop. I kept stealing glances. Afraid to embarrass myself by assuming she was who I thought she was, and incredibly sure that this could not be the Kati I knew (there was no way -- in my mind -- that she lived or worked in West Yellowstone, MT) I decided to ask one of the other women who worked there if it was her after she had left. I didn’t get the chance. The girl finally turned to me and said, with 1,000 question marks in her voice and on her face, “Kari?”

I answered, “Kati?”

I was. She was. And we were off. I had not seen her in 13 years, not since we waitressed together in Bethel. At that time she had just moved from Vermont and had just finished massage therapy school. I was 21 and in college. From Bethel, she moved out west to work at Yellowstone National Park and from there she met her man, had a baby and was settled in Island Park, ID. She is a massage therapist now, with a little girl named Mariah, an outdoorsy man, working at Free Heel and Wheel, with interests, friends and values I cherish and revere.

* * * * *

About a year or two ago, someone asked me who from high school would I like to bump into and have a conversation with. I had to think and think and really think to name one person I was interested in catching up with. Because I was defining people in high school terms and not thinking of who my friends and acquaintances may have become, I chose a guy I used to know, a drummer, a free thinker who never seemed caught up in the high school scene. Now if I was asked that question, I know who that person would be. It would be Kati. We would do more than chat - we would hike and ski and laugh and talk about growing up in North Rumford.

Had I stopped at the drive-through coffee bar on the side of the road, had she not been staying far later than she normally does, had I left any later from my friend Blue’s house, had anything been different in the land of timing and universe, I would not know what I know now.

The thing about high school is, people change. In high school Kati and I were not friends, she was the cheerleader and I was the skier. But as people get older, have new experiences and meet people who challenge them, they change in some ways - they find interests like your own while they are off living their own lives -- not the congealed life of a high school student. Yet as much as they may change, may meld into a person you never would have imagined, there is a part of them that remains the same. For Kati and I that part is where we are from and who we have become because of it.