Choosing to be Home

My last few years have been filled with travels and adventures — from farming in Maine, soaking in the architecture and history of Europe, and rock climbing in the mountains of the western states. Traveling is alluring: There is always the next site, the next experience, and the next interaction. But these never satisfied me. Even the best conversations or explorations left me with the slight feeling of being an outsider, of not being an intimate part of the life and culture of that people or land. Neither the Sagrada Familia of Barcelona nor the rugged coasts of Maine bring the belonging of choosing to be home. Home isn’t my cabin. It’s the bond shared with neighbors and community. It’s knowing the lives and histories of friends and neighbors and knowing they know yours. It’s the intimate knowledge of the land and the history of those inhabiting it.

Building a cabin allows me to be Here and to invest in home. To watch the squash grow, to witness the heron standing on it’s stilt legs in the clay-bottomed pond, to stand and talk with a neighbor about nothing and yet everything. The cabin allows me to be here to put down roots in the soil; I pray I have the ability to share the fruits that those roots may bear.