por Leslie Gonzalez Everett

The migration of many Puerto Ricans to the US mainland, particularly to the Northeast and to Florida, follows well-established patterns. My Father, like many Puerto Ricans, came to New York City in search of work and opportunity in the post-WWII era. He migrated and settled in the Bronx alongside his brothers and sisters and their families. He began to build his life like many Puerto Ricans, working in a factory and becoming a part of the growing community in the barrios of New York. They would travel back and forth, indeed like migratory birds, to visit the island and spend time with family and come back to the lives and community they were building in the city.

It was during one of these migratory trips to Puerto Rico that my father met my mother, and soon they began migrating together. All throughout my childhood, yearly like clockwork when summer rolled around, we would pack our bags and take flight from New Jersey to San Juan to spend time with family. We would land at my Abuelita’s house and spend two- weeks going house to house, or house to beach visiting with all my Tios, Tias, Primos, y Primas. We ate and played our way across the island and made the most wonderful memories year after year.

When I was twelve years old, my parents decided to move to Florida. We settled in Central Florida, again following a tried-and-true migratory pattern, landing near family in an area that had a very robust Puerto Rican community. The migration pattern to and from Puerto Rico on an almost yearly basis would continue into my high school years.

It was not until I met my husband, James (a Floridian since birth), married, and began a family of my own that the near yearly migrations to Puerto Rico stopped. We created our nest in Central Florida, close to my parents and raised our son in the same town where my husband was born and grew up. Like many young families, the funds for yearly trips were scarce, and the focus of our efforts became raising our son, working and the everyday routine of life. It was not until our son, Jimmy, had graduated from college that we would abandon our now-empty Central Florida nest, in search of something new.

With our nest empty, as our son joined the Peace Corps and began his service in Colombia, James and I decided that it was time for us to go on an adventure of our own. So, in a move that is still heralded by friends and family in Florida as being Loco/Crazy, we left our career jobs, packed up our camper and decided to head west to Yellowstone country. The mountains were calling, and so we went. We traveled across the country to come live and work in Yellowstone National Park. It was (and continues to be) the adventure of a lifetime, a new migration west.

We lived inside the park for two summers working seasonally, and then relocated to Montana as Yellowstone and Big Sky Country worked its magic on us. I have never experienced a landscape so wild and majestic, and so vasty different from the flatlands of Florida or the tropics of Puerto Rico. How can it be that I find myself in a place where my soul feels at home, and yet I am so clearly a foreigner? To put it in context, the estimated Puerto Rican population in Montana and Wyoming COMBINED is less than 3200! I can’t find gandules, platanos and bacalao without driving for miles and miles (if then!) and forget about pasteles.

Yet here I am living my best post empty-nest life, enjoying a natural world like no other in the lower forty-eight with flora and fauna that I never thought of coexisting with. Grizzly bears, mountain lions, bison, elk, mule deer frequent the area where I now live. Nature surrounds me; It challenges me with new experiences and comforts me with its familiar patterns.

Every year I look forward to springtime. Spring brings many familiar “faces” to the landscape, robins, white pelicans, and others each following their own migratory pattern that brings them here. But my favorite is the Sandhill Crane. Their presence is comforting and familiar. I will always remember the first time I saw a Sandhill Crane in Yellowstone NP, they arrived shortly after we did to the park’s interior. A small group landed in Hayden Valley and I was mesmerized, thinking “I wonder if they made the trip from Florida, like us”?

In Central Florida Sandhill Cranes are everywhere and when I see them arrive in Montana, they always make me smile. I feel that (like me) they look somewhat out of place and yet perfectly at home. Their gangly tropical appearance that is akin to a flamingo always looks mismatched to me against the rugged snow-capped Rocky Mountains, particularly in early spring. Yet, crown held high and wings out, they strut across the landscape slowly and deliberately making their nests, making their home.

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Leslie Gonzalez Everett lives in Paradise Valley (Emigrant), Montana with her husband James and rescue dog, Buddy. She enjoys wildlife watching, hiking, kayaking, and trying to make arroz con gandules like her Mami and Abuela (which is still a work in progress). Leslie is the former Chief Administrator of the official non-profit partner for Yellowstone National Park.