That feeling of returning home is usually a good one. It is a beautiful mixture of convenience, familiarity, and stability that is more than lacking when you're away. And especially so when you've uprooted yourself from even the most basic comforts of living. Me and my norms.
Air conditioning.
A bed and pillow.
Electricity.
Food that isn't dehydrated.
But that usually is what is sometimes so perplexing. Every trip is different. And more and more, every trip that strips you of superfluous things as necessities and brings everything to its base... makes coming home more difficult. How the mere thought of going home brings joy! And yet, those first few steps inside your darkened home after a week away floods you with a sense of displacement.
This should feel right.
And comfortable.
Familiar, even.
But it doesn't.
It feels temporal. Synthetic. Like a dollhouse with everything in its place because of the order I create and not that which is created for me.
For four days, the Grand Canyon was our home. We ate, drank, and slept on only what we could carry - wearing clothes for their function, not fashion - and measured the success of our days not just in the miles we trod but in the number of stars we observed through our tents as we fell asleep every night.
No amount of art on our walls or the size of the television we hope to have someday or the landscaping we want to do around our home could ever compare to the beauty that exists in places I have no hand in building... creating... decorating. Places like a giant canyon one mile deep with a river that runs, in some places, over 300 feet wide, at its bottom and miles and miles and miles of nooks and crannies for one to discover.
The expanse of that which we have seen, journeyed through, and settled in for even just four days has made my heart swell in such a way that these 1,600 or so square feet aren't quite big enough to contain it. Nor would 3,200 or 8,000, for that matter. None of it is enough and yet, in a way, it has to be. And that's the conundrum we live as co-adventurers whose hearts feel the tug of strings tied to the places we've been and yet so deeply wish to be rooted in the place that we are.
Air conditioning.
A bed and pillow.
Electricity.
Food that isn't dehydrated.
But that usually is what is sometimes so perplexing. Every trip is different. And more and more, every trip that strips you of superfluous things as necessities and brings everything to its base... makes coming home more difficult. How the mere thought of going home brings joy! And yet, those first few steps inside your darkened home after a week away floods you with a sense of displacement.
This should feel right.
And comfortable.
Familiar, even.
But it doesn't.
It feels temporal. Synthetic. Like a dollhouse with everything in its place because of the order I create and not that which is created for me.
For four days, the Grand Canyon was our home. We ate, drank, and slept on only what we could carry - wearing clothes for their function, not fashion - and measured the success of our days not just in the miles we trod but in the number of stars we observed through our tents as we fell asleep every night.
No amount of art on our walls or the size of the television we hope to have someday or the landscaping we want to do around our home could ever compare to the beauty that exists in places I have no hand in building... creating... decorating. Places like a giant canyon one mile deep with a river that runs, in some places, over 300 feet wide, at its bottom and miles and miles and miles of nooks and crannies for one to discover.
The expanse of that which we have seen, journeyed through, and settled in for even just four days has made my heart swell in such a way that these 1,600 or so square feet aren't quite big enough to contain it. Nor would 3,200 or 8,000, for that matter. None of it is enough and yet, in a way, it has to be. And that's the conundrum we live as co-adventurers whose hearts feel the tug of strings tied to the places we've been and yet so deeply wish to be rooted in the place that we are.
1 comment:
Kristine..... you are an AMAZING writer! You never cease to amaze me. What beautiful words and thoughts! God has given you a talent lady....
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