You CAN Go Home Again, if…..

As a teen, I read a then classic by Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again.  Despite its classic-status, from the very title, I read with resistance. It documents a young man, his relationship with home and his disillusionment with the changing world within which he lives.  The important part for me was not so much Wolfe’s deeply powerful experience as the concept that is may be possible to return to what once

held dear.

Home once found, is a treasure not to be taken lightly.  So each time love took me to the far reaches of the globe, I found myself eventually drawn back to the cradle that fostered me both as a child (Eastern Massachusetts) and as an adult (the hills of Western Massachusetts). 

When love sent me into a new life recently, I accepted that I was leaving my true home for the possibility of a deeper learning than any that had been offered before.  And yet I struggled, attempting to keep a foot in both worlds: unable to give up the potential that Love offers; unwilling to relinquish the blessed relief of Home. 

Eventually the need for greater sanity and a smaller environmental footprint became the reasonable choice.  I moved.

Settling into a new place as an elder with developed skills, opinions, and interests all the while facing and learning the ways of a new culture has been enlightening and deeply challenging. For example, a few years ago, planning a public Red Tent event, we acknowledged the reality that we ALL inhabit the innocence of The Maiden in some aspects of our lives, even while we have grown into The Crone or Mother in other parts.  I chuckle to think that I didn’t realize at the time that this was the story of my life. 

Divinity is creative beyond our ability to comprehend, giving us what we want although it takes us unawares requiring us to open before we can recognize it. 

I have been pursued by Love and chose to follow it. 

I have found deep veins of creativity and imagination in seeking ways of creating livelihood; it’s satisfying if, at times, filled with frustration and disappointment.  At other times it overflows with promise, satisfaction and elation. 

And yet, always there is the tug of Home.   How long has it been since I felt truly At Home?  How long since I relaxed into the familiar sense of being held in my inner-most self, of being mirrored by a culture that recognizes and honors me, just as I am; of being held in the way that shared history and the tender hills of home can hold.

A few years ago we decided to build a cabin, (a ‘shed’ on the building permit), for storing family heirlooms and memories, and to give us a foothold for making the memories still to come.  We contracted with a builder who we thought understood both our desires and our very limited purse.  And then we went home to Canada.

When we returned months later, we found the framing of a partially-finished castle of a cabin.  My heart sank.  I had envisioned something small and subtle at the edge of the woods, tucked behind the mini-home orchard planted when the children were young.  This was anything but.

Three carpenters later, the cabin was closed in, and deemed camp-able! We roughed it for an occasional night but continued to stay with friends in the village below.  Eventually it became time to return to the land.   And my Beloved craved the solitude that camping on the edge of the woods could offer.  This trip we moved into the cabin: lock, stock, and high-back, spoon-carved bed; sans ‘mod cons’ (electricity); and with a hand-dug outhouse.  Thanks, Honey!

It has been an adjustment.  Being back on the land is a gift beyond measure.  Waking to bird song and the unique light reflected that only higher elevations offers; the Full Moon rising over trees and not houses; star-laden skies.... 

But the view out of the screened window holes are, well, a different point of view.  The mini orchard is our foreground and the once-magnificent gardens, now feral, became our privacy barrier.  The 80 year-old red pine plantation has matured and is darker now, following an internal order rather than rigid human-planted rows of yesteryear.  Young beech, red oak and even a few sugar maples rise up among the towering red pines.

Yes, it IS possible to go home again.  It wont be the same home left last year, or last month, or even after decades of adventure.  We don’t step into the same river twice, but when we do step back in, the river recognizes our step and flows us along back home. 

Wiser, perhaps.