My mom's side is from Hermosillo. It's about six hours south of

Host:
The sun was sinking behind the mountains, spreading a honey-colored haze over the Sonoran desert. The air was heavy with heat and memory, and the faint buzz of cicadas hung in the distance, filling the silence with their unending chorus. A rusted pickup truck sat on the side of a dusty road, the engine long cooled, its hood collecting the last light of the day.

Jack sat on the truck’s tailgate, shirt sleeves rolled, a half-empty bottle of water resting beside him. Jeeny leaned against the door, her hair moving gently in the dry wind, her eyes on the horizon, where the world turned gold before fading into blue.

The desert always made things quieter—people, thoughts, regrets. Between them lay a crumpled note from an old magazine interview, the words scrawled at the top:

“My mom’s side is from Hermosillo. It’s about six hours south of Phoenix. I’ve been there, went there a lot growing up. I’m not really sure how to really describe it.” – Auston Matthews

Jeeny:
(reading the words again, softly)
“I’m not really sure how to describe it.” That’s what I love. There’s honesty in that. Some places don’t fit into language—they just live inside you.

Jack:
(nodding, eyes fixed on the horizon)
Yeah. Some places are like ghosts. You visit them, but they never really let you leave.

Host:
The wind shifted, carrying with it the faint smell of mesquite and distant smoke. The sky turned darker, streaks of pink and violet bleeding into each other like a bruise healing in reverse.

Jeeny:
(smiling faintly)
You ever have a place like that? Somewhere that’s part of you, but you can’t explain it without feeling like you’ll ruin it by saying too much?

Jack:
(quietly)
Yeah. My grandfather’s farm in Wales. Rain all the time. Mud up to your knees. But I still think of it every time I smell wet earth. Never told anyone what it really meant to me.

Jeeny:
(nods, her tone tender)
Because it’s not about what it looked like. It’s about what it felt like.

Jack:
Exactly. People always want descriptions—pictures, adjectives—but sometimes the truth of a place isn’t visual. It’s emotional.

Jeeny:
(glances toward the horizon)
That’s why I think Auston couldn’t describe Hermosillo. It wasn’t about the geography. It was about the people, the sound, the air that raised him without saying a word.

Jack:
(half-smiles)
The kind of place that doesn’t need to be explained to matter.

Host:
A single truck passed on the distant road, kicking up a trail of dust that shimmered briefly in the twilight. When the noise faded, the desert was quiet again—just wind, just the slow rhythm of breath and thought.

Jeeny:
There’s something sacred about roots like that. When you talk about where you come from, it’s never just a map point. It’s the weight of memory you carry in your skin.

Jack:
(leans back, voice low)
And sometimes, the place knows more about you than you know about it.

Jeeny:
(softly)
Maybe that’s why it’s hard to describe. Because when you try, you realize you’re describing yourself.

Host:
The sun was gone now. The sky had turned deep indigo, and the first stars began to pierce through, sharp and deliberate. The heat lingered, but the world had cooled enough to breathe again.

Jack:
You think people ever stop belonging to where they came from?

Jeeny:
No. You can move away, you can build cities inside yourself, but the ground you first stood on—the one that taught you what silence sounds like—that never leaves.

Jack:
(soft laugh)
That’s poetic.

Jeeny:
(smiles)
It’s true. You can bury your past, but it keeps breathing underneath the sand.

Host:
She knelt, drawing idle shapes in the dust with her finger—circles, spirals, lines that had no meaning but felt ancient anyway. The moonlight caught her hand, silvering her skin.

Jack:
You think he misses it? Hermosillo?

Jeeny:
Maybe not in the obvious way. Not with nostalgia, but with gratitude. He carries it, like a pulse that beats quietly under everything else.

Jack:
(thoughtfully)
You think that’s why he said he doesn’t know how to describe it?

Jeeny:
Yes. Because you don’t describe love—you recognize it.

Host:
A long pause. The wind moved through the desert again, brushing the sagebrush, whispering secrets from miles away. The sound felt like memory turned to breath.

Jack:
You know what I think? Some places teach you humility. The kind of humility that reminds you you’re not bigger than the land that raised you.

Jeeny:
(softly)
And some remind you you’re never really far from home, no matter how far you go.

Jack:
Maybe Hermosillo was both for him.

Jeeny:
Maybe it still is.

Host:
The stars multiplied overhead, filling the sky with their quiet testimony. The truck’s metal cooled, ticking softly in the night. Somewhere far away, a dog barked, its voice echoing through the stillness.

Jeeny:
You know, I like when people admit they can’t describe something. It’s honest. It’s saying, “This mattered to me too much for words.”

Jack:
(smiling faintly)
Yeah. Some truths should stay wordless. They’re more real that way.

Host:
The wind picked up again, lifting the dust, carrying their words away into the open dark—back to the land, back to the silence.

For a while, neither spoke. They just sat there, watching the desert breathe, the horizon fading, the stars thickening like spilled sugar across black glass.

Finally, Jeeny whispered, almost as if to herself:

Jeeny:
Maybe that’s all home really is—the place that leaves you speechless, but never lost.

Jack:
(quietly)
And maybe the words we can’t find are the ones that mean the most.

Host:
And so they stayed there, surrounded by the vast stillness of Hermosillo’s ghost, the wind humming through the sage and the night stretching forever ahead—
no need for description,
no need for explanation.

Just two souls,
quiet,
content,
and beautifully unable to say everything that was already being said
by the land itself.