A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of this reflection written many years ago in the mountains of Tennessee
When the journey itself became home…
How could I know melancholia would make me so crazy,
make of my heart a hell
of my two eyes raging rivers?
How could I know a torrent would
snatch me out of nowhere away,
Toss me like a ship upon a sea of blood,
that waves would crack that ship’s ribs board by board,
tear with endless pitch and yaw each plank
that a leviathan would rear its head,
gulp down that oceans’ water,
that such an endless ocean could dry up like a desert
that the sea-quenching serpent could then split that desert
could jerk me of a sudden with the hand of wrath
deep in to a pit?
Rumi
Forever, it seems, I have been searching for a sense of place—a place in the geographic sense. Perhaps it originated in my childhood.
My family’s home was high on a hill overlooking a beautiful valley spotted with farms and a small village with a beautiful white church steeple. I would sit on the front porch with my dad and just gaze at the colors of the sky and with a tilt of my head, I could watch the small cars moving slowly across the road in a distance, the farmer on a hill across the way turning the rich soil in the spring and baling the hay in the summer.
I had my special places to run and walk under the warmth of the summer sun with the guidance of a hawk that flew overhead. The front woods provided many places to explore including a small creek with several waterfalls. There was a country road that wound its way up a hill past my home. It was a long hard walk but once at the top the reward was a view of several lakes, hills and valleys and sky. I spent many hours, days walking those hills, through cow pastures and meadows, country roads, creek beds and wooded paths. Oh, what a wonderful beginning for a child curious about the world, a born explorer and pioneer.
Those memories are etched into my soul, into my very being. When I re-member those summer days walking in the hills every cell in my body reacts with a peaceful longing. I name that feeling a sense of place. A sense that my feet belonged on that soil, my legs were made to walk those fields, my eyes to scan the hills and valleys, my soul to feel the peace, the connectedness to the birds, the trees, the clouds and the stars. And then?
Like a plant uprooted from its very roots, I was flung into the sea of life, tossed by waves, washed up to strange shores, left to dry on high rocks and swept back to sea by the high waves of the tides. Oh don’t get me wrong, there were some wonderful moments, the warm sun drying my soul on the beach, the calm sea at night with a million stars overhead, being rocked by a gentle tide into shore. But at sea nonetheless.
Now, today, I am homesick. I highlight the word and check the tools of Microsoft Word to search the thesaurus for other meanings. A litany of emotions fills my soul as I read through the list: nostalgic, wistful, longing, regretful, reflective, melancholy, evocative. Tears fill my eyes, my heart changes its rhythm, my stomach turns slowly, my ears hear the music that one minute before was in the background. “Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you…” a piano solo by Keith Jarrett. Oh how fitting and unplanned. Or is it synchronicity. I want to believe in that magic, I want to believe in the forces of the universe, a higher power who blesses my life. But issues of social justice, hunger, war, prejudice and hatred, interfere with the belief that I could be so special.
I sip my coffee and listen…
The music brings me back to the now, this moment in Tennessee. Here, I can sit on the porch of my little cottage in a rocking chair crafted in the mountains nearby. I can look out on the rolling hills and the mountains of Eastern Tennessee. I can see the cattle, motionless in the pastures of a nearby farm. I can watch the cars moving on the small road in a distance and hear the train whistle and chug as it passes by. I see in my imagination of the past, a small girl-child wandering on a footpath in the rolling hills. She walks with steady feet, with a heart and soul full of adventure and a love of life. She looks up with awe and trust as the hawk gives her direction and companionship.
Oh, my images play tricks on me; they are but illusions, for I cannot discern if those hills are in Central New York or Northeastern Tennessee, the plains of Colorado or the coastal headlands of Northern California.
For a moment, I feel the freedom of the wandering. I feel the fullness of the child’s heart. I feel the sense of place in her every being. I feel her wonder and awe of the open spaces. I feel her love for the adventure and the passion for the journey, the explorations, and the discoveries life has to offer. I feel her aloneness but not as loneliness. I feel it as a sense of acquiescent solitude. A solitude which offers freedom for the journey, freedom to start walking whenever she feels the passion, a freedom which she, the adult woman, has yet to realize in its fullness.
My heart is burning with love
all can see this flame
My heart is pulsing with passion
like waves on an ocean
My friends have become strangers
and I am surrounded by enemies
But I am free as the wind
no longer hurt by those who reproach me
I am at home wherever I am
and in the room of lovers
I can see with closed eyes
the beauty that dances
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm of this moving world
I have lost my senses in my world of lovers
Rumi