Wildflower

A New Poem in The Way Back to Ourselves Journal: To The Mountains

Family, mostly unnamed, appears frequently in my writing. My latest poem, “Wildflower,” is my first published piece about my maternal grandmother.

I find myself reflecting upon her as I stride into my 40s: her story of becoming a widow with five children, and her legacy of leaving small-town Scobey, Montana, for the bigger small town of Sterling, Colorado, to give her children a chance for opportunity. To get to Sterling, she had to cross the Rocky Mountains—what courage to cart five children along that terrain as a single mother and new widow to an unknown town in the 1960s.

Decades later, when I was 13, as my mother and I made those mountain passes with my grandmother, I witnessed her come undone at the heights—something she hadn’t allowed herself to do years earlier.

Today I reflect on this—

Oh, what heights she lives upon today, with no fear.

To Grandma Wagner (1931 - 2001).

Wildflower

by Megan Huwa

Featured in The Way Back To Ourselves Journal: To The Mountains 2025

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Thank you to Kimberly Phinney & The Way Back to Ourselves Journal Masthead!