There’s something about building a life in a place where I am so deeply rooted, even my bones are aware. Trails hiked and roads biked are engrained like muscle memory, and I can’t help but take my two boys along those same paths. The endless woods are a magnet; nighttime crickets our lullaby.

No matter where I go, my body heaves a sigh of relief at the sights and smells of home: Northwest Arkansas, the Ozarks, Downtown Rogers, Lake Atalanta. Places and communities that have watched me grow and change, and I them.

Lakeview Drive holds my deepest, fondest memories: jars of lightning bugs, honeysuckle on the chain-link fence, handprints stamped in the driveway. My family loved to adventure down through the woods to Lake Atalanta and ride bikes over to Downtown Rogers. My sisters and I were outside with the neighbors regardless of the season, whether it was firework shows and climbing trees, trick or treat and piles of leaves, a six-foot snowman and snowball fight, or rain dances and flying a kite. I only lived on Lakeview Drive for seven sweet years, but my home now is a few miles away, the sounds of the night just the same.

Roots come before the flower, and my roots here precede me by at least two generations. My parents and my mom’s parents all graduated from BHS (and yet, go Mounties!). My children are now the fourth generation, and I like to think they can feel it, too. I can see the wonder in their eyes when they watch the goslings and tadpoles at Lake Atalanta, hear the pure joy in their laughter when they splash in the creek, feel the contentment in their bodies when we wander through our woods.

Not only do roots grow deep, they run wide. My husband and I were both born at the old St. Mary’s hospital and delivered by the same doctor two months apart, though we wouldn’t meet until our sixth grade year at Kirksey. We shared our versions of our hometown with each other and wound our paths together.

Growing up in an area changing faster than me added sparks of excitement to my teens. The Razorback Greenway brought bike rides back into my life. Crystal Bridges gave me a deeper connection to my family’s love for art. All the lush green trails made me realize how much beauty and nature exist here alongside the ever present urban development. Continuous change also made the simple sweeter. I found comfort in the steady. My teenage soundtrack went something like this: spirit weeks and Friday night student sections, weekend all-nighters and obnoxious prank calls, church lock-ins and Wednesday night Braums, swim parties and a game called hostage that feels a bit like a fever dream.

Because this place took great care of me, I didn’t worry too much about leaving for college, knowing it would always welcome me back. I spent four years at Pepperdine, loving the West Coast and studying abroad. Still, my favorite airplane window view is the one approaching XNA. It was especially visceral being freshly post-grad, a one-way ticket and excess of luggage in tow, knowing I was back for good.

A little stone cottage on Central Avenue in Downtown Bentonville is where Kyle and I spent our first two years of marriage. Lovely for many reasons, namely that my grandparents lived down the street, having recently moved from their 1950’s homestead a couple miles north. The view from their front porch rocking chairs included the old high school where they met and graduated from. I would walk or bike the quarter mile to visit them, my Mama Jo absolutely tickled that I didn’t have to drive.

All across our corner of the state, the downtowns carry the heart of each town. Whether a store has been there forever or a year, they chose to be there, and they chose well. Whenever I get the chance, I love to pop into my favorite trio of shops in Downtown Rogers: Kaleidoscope Collective, Dandy Roll, and Underbrush Books. I can’t stop myself from grabbing a sweet treat from Baked by Kori on my way home, either. These shops have a warmth that has me coming back again and again.

When I experience NWA, I experience all the versions I’ve known all at once. When I sit upstairs at Iron Horse, I can’t help but remember doing homework there after school during my babysitter and neighbor’s shift. When I buy a rocketship birthday cake at Alexander Baking Company a few doors down, I’m standing in what was once my mom’s First Street Art Works frame shop, seeing art cover the walls. When I walk past the Women’s Pavilion one block over, I can see myself watching Veggie Tales with my longtime besties in the back of their mom’s children’s shop, Cabbage Patch. When I drive around the Oak Street roundabout, I always get a glimpse in my mind of the Dr Pepper building that felt so iconic to my childhood. When I walk the trail around Lake Atalanta, I have the fuzziest memories of paddle boating and little fishing poles. When I take my boys to the children’s section at the public library, I remember the wall of VHS movies with the impossible decision of which one to check out.

There are endless novel experiences, too: discovering the Lake Fayetteville waterfall by accident, becoming obsessed with Ria Pizzeria, picking blueberries at Rosete Family Farms, realizing it’s possible to fall in love with a gym after joining Grounded, dropping my oldest off at a Crystal Bridges art camp, walking my youngest up the flyover bridge, breaking ground on a house designed by my dad, being asked by another childhood neighbor and babysitter to contribute to the magazine she works for.

With all of these experiences both past and present, the underlying commonality is the people: small business owners that feel like friends, waves and conversations with neighbors, smiles with strangers on the trails, booksellers that make the coziest London Fog, familiar faces almost anywhere we go, fellow natives sharing stories from back when, newcomers excited to be here, childhood friends whose children are now friends with my own.

NWA today does not look like the NWA of my childhood, but it feels like it did, and that’s what I love. I hope that it always feels this way, for me and for my boys and for all of us who call this beautiful place home.