The story so far
Do you know what
it is to call a place home? I won’t pretend like I do. But I’m beginning to
figure it out. It has little to do with physical possessions or time spent or
family. Or maybe it is a culmination of all of those things and more. But the
feeling certainly can’t be identified with either of them individually. I’ve
never been good at expressing myself concisely, so bear with me. My home is a
place for my mind and that alone. Don’t think that I mean to say that home is
in the mind; I wouldn’t say that either.
I remember a time when I was younger
and my parents once told me a kind of ghost story about my home. They said this
valley had something over people, that once they lived here a year, they’d
never leave. In college, my friends would tease me for talking about “my
valley”, saying they didn’t want to get brainwashed and join some creepy cult.
Well I never stood a chance as a little boy climbing giant aspen trees, taking
deep breaths of my pines all around, growing up to the clear streams that haunt
every path through the woods. I ask myself every day what it is that I want to
be when I grow up. I look at my friends around me. One loves fishing and would
give anything to be on the river any time, any day. One loves to play music
more than I’ve loved anything or anyone. One would sell his soul to study the
Rockies til the end of time. Well I want a piece of all those things, but none
so desperately as them. Do I lack something? Why can’t I find one thing to love
like they can?
Well maybe I’m better off than they.
I may not know what I love to do, but I sure as hell know where I love to do
it. Who says you have to find out what you want to do before you can find where
you want to live? What if where you live is more important to you than what you
do? Well at this point I know where this life will be lived. First I need to
groom myself before I return home. It will be like waiting for the embrace of
someone I love for two years. I’ve been waiting for such a long time to feel
your arms around me again. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen your
smile. Such a long time since I’ve felt so inexplicably happy. Such a long time
since the world just fell away. To smell her again in two years as a new…man?
(maybe boy is the right term) anyways…to smell her again will make this all
worth it.
