Marcia Ratliff/ Editor-in-chief

Last weekend I went to Ogden, Utah for the National Undergraduate Literature Conference, where I presented a paper. It was a nerdfest in every sense of the word, and I loved it.

I got to hobnob with other English majors from across the United States, San Diego to Maine. I listened to presentations about postcolonial theory and poetry. I saw a magpie for the first time, and I could not stop looking at the mountains.

One night, some other conference attendees and I went to a small theater called the Good Company Theater, where there was a poetry open mic. Packed into the small second-floor auditorium with its creaky wood floor, I listened to people who were older, stronger and smarter than me.

Their poems were fiery and rich, and sometimes a reader stomped the stage with excitement. The room filled with snaps and claps that sounded like cloudbursts.

I thought: wow, I could live here.

Besides the conference itself, time away from Winona got me thinking about what it’s like to reimagine your life.

I have been doing enough of that already as a senior. Stepping off the stage on graduation day will be a common enough thing, but it will also be a weird moment, signaling my exit from one community and my entrance into another.

On the last day of the conference, we got out at 2:30 p.m., and by 3 p.m. I was headed for the mountains as fast as I, unaccustomed to the altitude, could go.

Because Ogden, snuggled up to the Wasatch Mountains and beneath the shadow of Mount Ben Lomond, is surrounded with trails that look like spider veins on Google Maps. They go over the foothills and into canyons, over waterfalls and into thin ravines full of tiny scrub oaks, which cover the trail like a garden lattice.

You can get to them from downtown Ogden in about 20 minutes at a slow run.

As I ran into the mountains, the sky was clearing after a day of intermittent showers. The high peaks shone with golden light, and it finally reached down to me on the singletrack gravel trail. I stripped off a layer. Mountain bikers and runners and large fluffy dogs greeted me. I sat on a rock next to waterfall, dipping my fingers into the cold water.

Again, I thought: I could live here. Mainly because the trails are right next to the town, like they want people to hike them. Because the people meet and read poems like ideas are real.

Where am I going with this? What I got out of my 2.5 hour run that day, and my trip to Utah, was not an itch to up and move across the country. Rather, it was a realization that I could make any place that has trails and poets home. Winona, with its preponderance of both, is one of those places.