Place as Home

Some places just feel like home.  I didn’t know that until I left home.  I was born and grew up in central North Carolina, so it is also my first home.  Specifically, the woods of central NC have always felt like home to me.  As a child in a perceived safer time and definitely less populated one, I roamed them.  I made forts under low hanging branches, pulled up moss to make a carpet for my floor and fashioned bark and rocks and sticks for decoration.  I turned over rocks in creek beds looking for creatures, frogs, salamanders, even snakes.  As a teenager, the woods became my favorite place to run.  When running in the woods I felt sheltered, and the quiet vibes of slow growth or dormant rest depending on the season were contagious.  I realized how much the woods felt like home, when in adulthood I lived in many places without great expanses of woods nearby where trails were few and far or very short.

There is one place I did not live but only visited that felt like home, Thailand, even the city of Bangkok.  Nothing was familiar there. There were no forests, but I felt a sense of peace there in my soul. My spirit felt at home.  Perhaps it was the culture, steeped in eastern philosophies, or the fitness routines of the masses at dawn in Lumphini park.  I even felt peace on the beach of the Andaman Sea, and I am not normally a beach person.  Regardless, I felt it there. 

The mountains, Smoky or Rocky, feel like home to me.  When I drive toward them and they first peek their summits over the trees or around the corner, my chest expands as I involuntarily take a deeper breath, and my heart rate slows.  The continued presence of mountains standing like my guardians, full of strength and endurance seeps into me.  When I am fully in them, running or hiking, I can’t help but receive; receive their power, receive their patience, receive their reassurance and inspiration.  They seem to be saying, we’ve got your back.  You are here and you are strong; you can do hard things.

All these physical places, as different as they may be, bring me a feeling of safety of somehow being held by something bigger than myself.  Although it can be argued that none of these places are safe and home is where you make it, for me, it is the feeling I get when I am in certain spaces matters.