Where is “home” for you?
Most animals in nature understand the concept of home. It might be a nest or an underground burrow. A pond or a riverbank. A hollow log. A web strung between two branches.
Home is a place where animals feel safe, where they sleep and eat, and hatch their young. It’s where they belong.
For us humans, “home” is a more complicated concept. Many of us are disconnected from our birthplace. We’re mobile, and rootless.
Sad to say, I’m one of those ramblers. I come from a long line of them.
My parents were the grandchildren of European immigrants who sailed to America in the 1890s and settled on farms in the Midwest. Half a century later, my parents migrated farther west, to the Pacific coast. They were happy there, but eventually my dad’s career brought them eastward. When their transcontinental trip ended in a tiny mountain town in South Carolina, my mother got off the train and wept in despair as her feet sank into red clay.
I am the only member of my family born in the South.
All through my growing-up years, we moved again and again: South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York. Every couple of years, we were packing up. I had no idea where I belonged.
As an adult, I continued that nomadic pattern. Almost all my homes have been linked to a job, or a partner, or children. I lived where I needed to, where circumstances plopped me, not necessarily where I wanted to. Some of those places I liked – sort of. Others I couldn’t wait to get away from.
All told: Twenty-four different homes, in seven states.
At some point, I started yearning for home – whatever “home” meant. I envied people who live in a place where their ancestors settled five generations back. By god, those people know where they belong.
What I wanted more than anything was that kind of kinship with the land. A sense of familiarity with a place. Roots that sink deep.
The goal eluded me until age 65. Until I was able, at long last, to drop anchor. Circumstances — and Zillow — helped me find the place where I belong. And now, finally, here I am: home.
The Eastatoee Valley, where I live with my husband, is “just down the road a piece” from where I was born, so it feels like a pretty good place to sink roots. The irony, of course, is that after all that rambling, all those moves, I’ve circled right back around to where I started.
This valley has its own history, as you can imagine. Native Americans lived here centuries ago, growing corn and hunting game. Then the white traders came. And the soldiers, and the settlers. Farmsteads sprung up next to the river. Loggers came through in the early twentieth century.
Some of those early homesteads are still here, along the two-lane road that curves through the valley. I drive past the decaying barns and houses, and I think of the people who lived here before us. I think about the families they raised, the crops they grew, the hymns they sang. I wonder about their hopes and dreams.
Here’s a photographic tour of the Eastatoee Valley. I hope you enjoy this peek at my homeland.
I also hope that wherever you are, it feels like home to you. And if it doesn’t, I hope your search will take you there.
I think part of our homelessness is the attempt to strip meaning out of our lives. The more free of binds we are, the more valuable we are to capitalism.
As an adoptee, I can totally relate to this yearning for home and sense of familiarity with a place.