Harkening homeward
I wander fairly far and often. As I do, every once in a while, I find myself being pulled back home - even as my feet stay planted on some tiled elevator floor or a weathered cobblestone street - being whisked away to an Appalachia that feels both ever near and impossibly far.
In my mind, it is very often a spring day there. The sun is shining on an otherwise ambiguous grassy meadow in the midst of the greener-than-green Tennessee woodlands as the surrounding mountains hum in joyful peace. Birds sing idly, sweeping sharply past pink and white blossoms while a soft, cool wind dances gently along the slowly warming earth. A creek runs not too far off, refreshing the air with its tinkling flow as it not-all-that-urgently goes in search of the river down the valley. Often a fiddle or a banjo or both will start to play as my mind starts to rediscover my home and what could be described as an ancient belonging that accompanies it.
It is strange to consider any part of oneself as “ancient.” After all, in my own case, I haven’t yet eclipsed three decades on this side of eternity, and yet somehow the feeling I experience at home in the mountains goes well beyond temporal familiarity. I’d almost go so far as to say it borders on existential belonging to a place, or at least the idea of one, and if I indulge in some self-exploration I can feel an almost genetic memory going back through generations of my own family in and around Tennessee all the way back to centuries ago amidst stoic hills in the Scottish Highlands or deep in the wooded valleys of Welsh wilderness.
I suspect that some (or most) of this experience is more developed, maybe even manufactured, than innate, but I do think it points to something interesting about the notions of home and belonging.
On the one hand, certainly part of my sentiments for East Tennessee stem from my own experiences. It is a place where people tend to tarry, and my own childhood was characterized by consistency and closeness in my social environment. Such an upbringing lends itself to deep roots in a social architecture and - where that architecture is comprised of genuinely good friends and family - lasting affection for a place and its people. The land itself creates a joyful playground, too, one in which I very much reveled growing up. My friends and I would regularly enjoy outdoor adventures and chaotic, nonsensical games into the twilight as the summer sun clung to the land long enough to make fireflies a bit easier to catch. Beyond town, venturing into the mountainous wilderness would give me an opportunity to forge lasting relationships in my early youth and seek peace and wonder in my adolescence. The community in that part of the world is generally comprised of decent folks that make navigating different environments generally comfortable and familiar - from Subs ‘n Such to ProCare Tire to Los Amigos, the people you run into are kind and welcoming. All of these benefits exist in an environment that is not so Rockwellian or remote as to become isolating or inconvenient, with plenty of consumer conveniences at hand and larger city infrastructure nearby. My home is certainly not without its shortcomings - rural income inequality, substance abuse, a general lack of diversity, an underinvestment in advanced economic sectors - but my own positive experiences likely constitute a major part of the feeling of home that follows me as I wander, and those experiences were enabled by a number of exceptional attributes of the place and its people.
On the other hand, some part of this genuinely feels innate - a gene sequence in my DNA, a definitional line in my source code, a foundational truth inscribed on the pillar of my soul. My family has lived west of the Appalachian Mountains for most of what I know of our ancestry, and given our not-too-distant agrarian past, we have always been very tied to the physical environment of that place - the land, the trees, the hills. Weirdly, the feeling is almost that of being deeply known by a friend, one that has seen where you’ve come from and also believes in where you are going, with whom there exists a feeling of unspoken collaboration as you both move forward along paths that are different but irrefutably connected - only the friend in this case is the ancient land that constitutes “home.” Interestingly, this more innate feeling is not exclusive to the one place in which I was raised. I have been fortunate enough to explore some of upper Scotland and parts of the forests of Wales - two of the homes of my ancestors - and while the familiarity and belonging are certainly lesser, they undoubtedly existed there, too. In short, those places felt kind of like home.
In conversations with friends, I have likened the experience of finding love to that of resonant frequencies in nature. Without going into too much detail, every object in nature has a resonant frequency (or, really, and infinite number of resonant frequencies in sets of harmonics) that are characteristic to them - their specific size, shape, and properties. This phenomenon is what makes singing in the shower all of a sudden sound like a Viennese opera hall - certain notes hit, or come close to hitting, one of the built environment’s resonant frequencies. At those frequencies, the actual power of the sound or excitation is less important than the fact that its frequency coincides perfectly with a resonant frequency of an object - a gentle breeze consistently at the right frequency can destroy a bridge made of metal and concrete. My comparison to love, then, is that certain people in the world may hit our own resonant frequencies regardless of their apparent attractiveness on an objective level, and regardless of the gravity of any introductory interactions with them.
I wonder if something similar may be said of the more innate feeling of home - that certain places come closer to hitting our resonant frequencies, and that those frequencies themselves can be shaped by a number of factors. For me personally, it may be that one of those factors is the physical appearance of an environment to be mountainous and the knowledge that my family has been tied to the place. For others, it may be something completely different. In some cases, the places in which we live may actually shape the resonant frequencies of individuals that then dictate how much like home other places feel, creating some internal logic loop that doesn’t bear exploring for fear of a singularity that consumes writer and reader, both.
And so it may be that while our own experiences and objective elements of a place can influence the degree to which we feel belonging to it, some elements of “home” may be more innate and immutable than that in a way that defies understanding.
The expression “Home is where the heart is” is trite, and a little too trochaic. That said, I understand it - the people for whom we harbor affection do create feelings of belonging, of peace. In the course of my wanderings I have certainly built relationships that are invaluable and indispensable in my life, many of which have never physically crossed the Blount County line. And when I spend time with those people, I feel tremendously enriched, and happy, and in existential repose the likes of which is both refreshing and healing. That said, it simply is not the feeling of home with which I associate East Tennessee. It lacks the absolutism, the solemn ominousness that accompanies a quiet but powerful truth - I am tied to that place, and that tie offers a degree of unflappable identity that grants me resolve and peace even when I face moments of uncertainty or conflict.
For all those roots, though, the refuge and knowledge of home is but one calling we can feel. One has other drives in life that may compel him or her to wander - purpose, love, adventure, all call us forth when our roots compel us to stay or return.
It is strange to feel both called forth and called home. The two compulsions are necessarily in conflict with one another, leaving one to make a judgment call regarding that which gives the greatest joy or peace. That said, the tension does not implicitly or inescapably characterize any calling as good or bad, developmental or deleterious. I think, as with many things, the truth lies in the middle ground - an existentially prudent path likely involves navigating callings that each have validity. The extent to which one skews towards one or another will depend on the individual, but skewing primarily away from one calling does not make it invalid or unsavory. A calling may add value without being itself dispositive or even particularly persuasive so long as it contributes to decision-making or understanding in a constructive way. For example, even as people wander for one reason or another, the calling to home that grounds them, and reminds them of the support and understanding home offers from afar, can enable them to pursue callings of adventure or purpose with greater resolve.
I know that many people have more complex relationships with their homes than I. Broken families, unsupportive communities, and remote dreams can all drive folks to feel more weighed down than anchored by their own homes, or so I would imagine. I cannot speak for how those folks do or should feel, but for my own part, I hope that “home” for those people, while maybe less fulfilling, still serves as a grounding concept in their own self-understanding, even if it exists as a foil for the destination to which those folks aspire.
For my own part, I am very grateful for the foundation my concept of home provides to my soul, and while I cannot speak to when or whether I will ground myself there again, I do not find myself troubled or burdened by that lack of certainty. Returning to the metaphor of an old and knowing friend, such rich and deep relationships do not require physical closeness to remain supportive or true. As such, while I wander chasing other callings, I find tremendous peace in harkening homeward to that idea of where I come from, the land that shapes it, the people who made it, and the foundation it offers to respond to those forces that call me forth.
