Hi there, I’m Kaytlin (or Boof or Boofina - depending on who you ask). Lancaster was my first home. I was born at Lancaster Hospital and played softball at Parkview Little League. I left home at 18 and have lived outside Lancaster ever since.

​

I was hopeful when I left, like most 18-year-olds are, that I could shed the child I was and emerge something completely different. Time has passed and space has expanded (I live in Northern CA now), but some things never leave you. It turns out I didn’t “shed” much, instead, I built upon the person I was.

​

For example, heat and wind, not a problem for me. Dust and sweat, which bother most people, never seem to get under my skin.

​

I come home to Lancaster every holiday to be with my family. Each time I realize again the ways that my home in Lancaster has shaped me. There’s a quote I think of when I come home: “Children brought up in great security, tribal or familial, aren’t very aware of love, as I suppose fish aren’t very aware of water. That’s the way it ought to be, love as air, love as the human element[0].”

​

What I was running from at 18, I now run towards — the desert, the poppies, the house in Lancaster that I still consider a home.

​

How do pies fit into all this? It’s pretty simple, I was visiting my parents over the summer and my mom made an amazing meal. We wanted to compliment the meal with a pie, but there were none to be found. It started off as a bit of a joke, “making 200 pies for Thanksgiving in Lancaster!” What could be more ridiculous for someone like me who’d never made a pie in her life?

​

When I spoke the idea to a few friends from my life after Lancaster they said, “Let’s do it!”. Not for the money, but for the experience. I told these women about the desert preserve and the enchiladas at El Toreo. We’ll all travel down to Lancaster just before Thanksgiving and I’ll get to share the childhood desert rat part of me with a few close friends who make up the family I’ve built in this secondary chapter of my life.

 

This might look like a business, but it’s not. It’s just me, video-calling my Mom, learning, and sharing the best parts about Lancaster with a few special people who didn’t have the privilege of growing up in the desert.

​

Let’s see if we can pull it off!

Kaytlin

​

[0] That one is Ursula K. Le Guin