Sorrow in Tok and Schizoid Questions

When my family drove up to Alaska in 1984 (or so), we passed through Tok; it's one of the first towns after the road turns to pavement when you're driving from Canada. We took a historic picture of the four kids on top of Bucky, the (stuffed) moose. On our way out of Alaska in 1988 (or so), we all mounted Bucky. He was looking a little bald, as I remember, but even so, I was really looking forward to seeing him again.
This morning, I asked the campground host where to find Bucky. Well, he was aging poorly, so he had been moved up to some hill. However, people mistook him for a real moose, and he got pretty shot up. It is much to my sorrow to announce that Bucky is no more.
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Growing up one of the most difficult questions to answer simply and truthfully is: Where are you from? I standardized a response which began, "most recently from. . ." Where ever I was, it always seemed like I was from the place I had just left. Living in CA, I would tell people that I'm from PA; returning to Ridgway, PA, I would say that I'm from CA. I guess I was answering the question in terms of spatial history. The last place I was in, the place I had left was where I had come from.
At the beginning of this trip, moving through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, the question felt more uncomfortable. As much as I had just come from PA, and much of my family is there, and would have to say that I am mostly a Pennsylvania girl, something feels off. Most of my fellow travelers are here on vacation, a little parenthesis in their established life back home, where they are from.
Not having an established life and not knowing where I will go next, I feel like a nomad. Now this is where I began to feel a bizarre split. Entering the northern wilderness memories flooded back: Rivers that run full of silt, fireweed, the smell of tundra, knowledge of permafrost, the sound of crows cawing. These are all part of me and my memories of childhood. I realized this morning that except for highschool, I spent more years at Chena Elementary (in Ft. Wainwright, AK) than any other school. This is not a small, distant part of my history, it is now a huge, looming presence.
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years. . .
These became part of that child who went forth every
day, and who now goes, and will always go forth
every day.
~~Walt Whitman