“Home” and the Nomad

It's amazing how something like a tree (I am a bit of a tree lover) can transport you home almost instantly. As I look out at the mountain lake, it is the pines and a few others that make this reminiscent of this idea we call home.

Home is an idea as much or more than a place. For some whose roots are deep in a location this is meaningless because Home could never be separated from the family friends and nostalgic familiarity of a singular (sometimes 2 nearby) place. Others find their roots tied to ancestral land and tribal links so that though they may transplant their bodies themselves, their roots always bound in another place they can always return to. Then there are those of us who pause when asked, “where are you from?”. Transplanted so many times you don't know which to choose - “The Potted Plant” - as my mom once insightfully described. Not moving as often as the traditional Nomad but even they at least have a region, origin, or route – Home is their colony – those they travel with, perhaps go back to and the trail along the way.

This is the modern Nomad. Roots are neatly tucked in the favorite Burks, pack, or perhaps a tangled mess kept in the Heart. It runs through the veins. It is in the silence, the heartbeat, the place for sitting at the end of the day, the cup of tea, the next mountain, home is you, home is many, home is few, home is none. Home is Earth. Home is no longer a binding but rather a choice. Home is here. Home is in the familiar. Home is that hill and that tree. Home is in you. Home is in me. Home is in heaven where someday we'll be.