The Map of Enough

November 11, 2013
May’s chronicle of dropping out with her fiancé from the canyons of New York City for the remote grassy basin near Bozeman, Mont., delineates a year of soul-searching and yurt construction by the couple. The pair resolve to construct by their own hands a Mongolian-style dwelling on the 107 acres situated at the base of the Gallatin Range that belong to May’s parents. May tends toward a nomadic temperament, while her partner, Chris, a carpenter, is grounded and taciturn. Their work evolves organically as they tackle the construction just in time for their first winter: from sawing and treating the wood slats (khar mod) that make up the walls to hauling the wood-burning stove and sewing the huge sheet of white canvas that will serve as cover. There are visits by citified family and friends, occasional spottings of elk herds and a mountain lion, and securing of a rescue dog, Bru. Throughout, May ruminates seemingly endlessly over the elemental question: “How do we choose to live?”

Starred review from December 1, 2013
In an impressive debut memoir, a self-proclaimed "Woman of the World" chronicles her journey to find a home. May, who has worked as barista, conservationist, teacher and vegetable farmer, joins the ranks of Gretel Ehrlich and Annie Proulx, celebrants of sagebrush, big skies and journeys of self-discovery. The author grew up a traveler: Her parents moved frequently, and when asked where she came from, May would respond, proudly and defiantly, "I am from nowhere." A move to the Gallatin River Valley of Montana with her fiance fed a new restlessness to discover a place she could call home and, even more importantly, to discover if rootlessness defined her. On 107 acres of land owned by her parents, the couple decided to build a yurt, a traditional Mongolian structure of bent wood covered with canvas, providing "a thin membrane" of shelter from owls, coyotes and a slinking mountain lion. They finished the painstaking project just before the snows began. Shrouded by the hushed winter landscape, May felt herself quieted, and she honed a new skill: "Learning silence in order to hear your own truth." Instead of having no roots, she decided she, too, had been shaped by the places where she had lived --"a lineage of worldliness"--places essential to her identity that she did not need to travel constantly. While her friends wondered when she would take to the road with a new map, she settled into the tasks of day-to-day survival: planting, reaping, sweeping, cooking: "Some whole days," she writes, "could be spent taking simple care." May's poetic, gleaming prose makes palpable the wildness and wind, freezing and thawing earth, delicate fragrances of grass and budding trees--and her own profound transformation.

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November 1, 2014

As a child, May considered herself a "global girl from many places," moving every two years with her nomadic family--but in her thirties, her perspective changed. When presented with an opportunity to live on 107 acres in Montana, May and her fiance, Chris, seize it. Determined to experience the wilderness fully, they build a yurt--more specifically, a traditional Mongolian ger--on the capital-L "Land." This moving memoir celebrates life as simple, teeming, beautiful, and poetic, with May making gentle observations: "Three magpies balanced on a fence nearby. Their movement caught my eye."

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