Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Can You Ever Go Home Again?

Maybe that's a cliche title, but it's where my head is right now. Things with my partner are going well, actually, and we're preparing to sell the house (painting, etc). Over the weekend, we took a walk through the old Grove, down the trail a ways and to the creek. We went as far as a footbridge before turning around. The walk was nice--but what stuck with me were my emotions about the land itself.

If you've been a follower of mine for any length of time, you know how special the Grove was to me and how difficult it was to actually move out. But it's odd--going to the house doesn't stir up as many emotions as the land itself does. When I moved, I said goodbye and essentially thanked the land for all it had taught me. You may think that's crazy, and that's fine. You simply didn't experience it as I did.

So there we were, standing on the footbridge and looking down into the creek--and it's as if I knew I couldn't go any farther into the Grove. It felt like something was closed off, and the thought of me walking farther into those woods felt like a trespass. That surprised me. It was on that same footbridge 5 years that I had first felt the pull of the woods again, felt the pull of nature's spirit like I hadn't in decades. But whatever spirit(s) greeted me then and opened my eyes to a new way of living are gone now, or at the least, they have nothing else to say to me.

My partner and I may work things out, but regardless, we'll have to move. Part of me wants to hang on to the land, too, but what good would it do? Can't force it. Can't pretend. The next step lies elsewhere, and I assume it's there that I will find home again.

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