I had my first abortion at twenty-five. My boyfriend and I had been dating for six months, living in a Volkswagen van in Hawaii. We were in the process of moving back to the mainland. We missed our families and the high desert’s open spaces. My boyfriend flew ahead of me to start a job surveying fish on tributaries of the Clearwater River. I stayed behind to continue working at the wildlife refuge where we met. My larger task was to sell the van.

I continued to park in our usual pullouts, Anini Beach, Salt Pond, and when errands and a change of scenery were needed, Nawiliwili Harbor. One night in late May a swamp hung in the air. The ocean had shifted, stagnating the breeze. I followed the red dirt road along the airport runway to a clearing in the brush encircling Nawiliwili Lighthouse. The spot nearest the ocean was taken by a red truck. Several men drank beer and shouted stories at each other. I tucked the van between towering naupaka bushes, not leaving her interior except to squat-pee in the moondust dirt. Jets from the mainland dropped from the sky to touch the runway with their shimmering wheels. Their bellies pulled the whole island up out of my body with a whooshing that felt like longing.

Whenever we were homesick, we parked at Nawiliwili. The heave of the jets would usually leave us feeling humbled to be on island and we could return to the quiet beaches of the rainy north coast. That night the jets and the men left me feeling uneasy, nauseous. I hardly slept. When the sun rose from the ocean, I realized I’d been feeling that way every night for several weeks. I walked down to the lighthouse; the men and the red truck were gone. I sat on the hot white stones of her base and watched the ocean catch whitecaps and tumble into herself. Everywhere was weight. Everywhere birth. I knew immediately in my body that I was pregnant. And I knew immediately it wasn’t time for me to become a mother, wasn’t time in my relationship with my partner for us to parent, wasn’t time in my body and my heart to stretch and grow with love for a child.

The VW sold and I flew home to my parents’ house in north Idaho. My dad had placed cut tulips in a vase on the dresser in the guest room. It was early June. I watched the sleeping near bud of each tulip when I called my boyfriend to tell him I was pregnant. We were very quiet together.

He went into the woods for work for a week. I made an appointment at a clinic in Kalispell for his off week. I was due to start a summer class to fulfill a lingering requirement for my undergraduate degree. We would drive north to Kalispell and then to Missoula for me to start school.

I chose the clinic because it was in an old house and provided family care, not just abortions. The doctor was one of the first to provide legal and safe abortions in the state of Montana. I remember the blinds were gently slanted so passersby couldn’t see in, but the warm summer light still filtered into the waiting room. I hadn’t slept. I had cried in the shower stall of the cheap motel we stayed in on the outskirts of town for what felt like hours. As we stepped into the room, my boyfriend held my hand so tightly it hurt. I have no memory of the procedure, but I remember my legs still spread and asking the doctor if we could keep it. And she said of course and then added, usually only the native women ask to take it with them. Her saying that brought other women into the room. It proved I wasn’t the only one who had chosen this path with so much weight and freedom rolled together. I could feel my choice standing with their choices and the inexplicable carrying on that would happen when we stepped outside.

Nearly a decade later a young man would vandalize that doctor’s clinic. A photograph in the newspaper showed the table where I had had my abortion tipped over, glass broken, files strewn about. Was my story one of them? In one of those envelopes bursting, begging to be let out? The doctor chose not to reopen her clinic. She was several years away from retirement and too exhausted by the hate of that young man to continue her vital work. It brings me grief that her career, shaped by compassion and knowledge, ended in violence.

We drove into Augusta as a storm rolled off the front. We turned up a dirt road to a camping spot we knew, pink storm clouds lifting off the bunch grasses, curlews tilting in the wet air. I took a pain pill and slept heavily in our bed made on the ground. I awoke early. My boyfriend sleeping his heavy morning sleep. All night I had slept curled around the plastic container that contained my blood, her blood, the blood that grew from an egg that formed in my body when I was still in my mother’s body. Even this early the sun was hot, the wind whipping. I climbed a small rise and started to walk into the next draw when an antelope raised her head. We stared at one another for a long time. Then the grass shifted and her calf stood, their coats rubbing the already dry grass, everything the color white and rock. They leapt, dipping into the next cutbank. I was alone but felt her blessing.

I dug a small hole in the base of the draw with a stone. I opened the plastic container and poured her into the dirt. I covered her. I read lines from Richard Hugo’s High Grass Prairie.

Wherever we live, we sleep here
The grass flows ever to us, ever away
You can sleep
forever in this grass and not be cold.

Years later, when my grandmother was dying, she kept seeing a small girl running through our house. She would smile and close her eyes. My mother is dying now, and she has a reoccurring dream that a granddaughter is waiting for her. She has a name; she is stretching out her hand.

In whatever worlds we have the opportunity to exist, it is a blessing. May you always be in your power and be proud of your decisions.