One of the most memorable assignments I ever completed at Western Nevada College's Fallon campus wasn't a test or a research paper. It was a simple question in a cultural geography class.
Describe your sense of place.
If you've never heard that phrase before, it means the place that has shaped you — the place that feels like home, where your memories are rooted and where part of your identity was formed.
For me, the answer came easily.
The Black Hills of South Dakota.
My family had moved to Fallon not long before, and while I was building a new life here, my heart was still back in the pine-covered hills where I had grown up. I wrote that paper without a second thought because, at the time, there wasn't another answer.
It took me nearly 20 years before Nevada began to feel like home. I can't tell you exactly when it happened, but I know the feeling. Every time I returned from a visit to South Dakota and crossed the Nevada state line, I felt myself relax.
I was home.
For years, I thought that was the end of the story.
It wasn't.
I spent 35 years teaching in Churchill County. I was involved in the schools, attended community events, cheered at games, went to concerts, watched students grow into adults and raise families of their own. I knew a lot of people, and I thought I knew Fallon.
Then, about nine months ago, I started working at The Fallon Post.
Since then, I've discovered a side of Fallon I never really knew.
Every week I edit stories about people who quietly give their time to make this community better. I meet volunteers who organize events that bring people together. I learn about nonprofits filling needs most of us never see. I talk with artists, ranchers, historians, business owners, coaches, civic leaders and neighbors who simply see something that needs to be done and do it.
Many of them don't seek recognition. In fact, some seem almost uncomfortable with it.
They just care about Fallon.
Somewhere along the way, reading those stories and occasionally writing a few of my own, something changed.
I fell in love with Fallon.
Not because the town had changed, but because I had.
I realized that, for all those years, I had been living in my own little corner of Fallon. My world revolved around school, my family and the people immediately around me. There was nothing wrong with that, but it meant I missed so much of what was happening beyond my own circle.
Now I find myself reading about a museum volunteer preserving local history, a group raising money for school music programs, neighbors organizing a community event, or someone quietly helping families in need, and I have the same thought over and over again:
"I had no idea."
Those moments have become one of the unexpected blessings of this job.
This community isn't special because of its buildings or where it sits on a map. It's special because of the people who choose, every day, to make it better than they found it.
Sometimes you have to listen to people's stories before you truly know a place.
If this column has a purpose, I hope it's to share some of the people, places and moments that have helped me see Fallon through new eyes. Maybe you'll discover something you didn't know, too.
That assignment at Western Nevada College asked me to write about my sense of place.
If I were writing it today, my answer would be different.
The Black Hills will always be part of who I am. They shaped my childhood and gave me memories I'll always treasure.
But today I'd write about Fallon.
Not because I've lived here for 36 years.
Because somewhere over the last nine months, while reading the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things for this community, I finally discovered my hometown.
And that's what home feels like.
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