Who Says You Can't Go Home?

Of everything I miss about home, the smell of salt air is the deepest. It's a clean, wild smell. It smells like tomorrow and yesterday. It's sweet, subdued, wet, crisp. It's the smell of persistence, a nature that remembers a time before us and a compromise to allow us to settle in the islands and shorelines for the time being. It's the smell of truce. I caught my first whiff in months when Jackie and I were driving through SeaTac. My throat ached and my chest opened with longing for the mudflats, the mountain ranges, the ferries, the seagulls, the pockets of lakes, and the twisting web of rivers, streams, creaks and brooks that lace the Puget Sound basin. I wanted familiarity and history once more. I wanted to know how to pronounce the local towns rather then being the person calling "Couch" street couch like you sit on rather than couch like rhymes with pooch. I wanted to be able to smile at an out-of-towner tackle behemoths like Sequim, Dosewallips, Deschutes and Sauk. I wanted the rest of the state to be filled in like a topographical map, rather than a taut white canvas. I suppose some people find excitement in filling in a blank map, discovering new places, expanding their geography. I find a deep comfort in further detailing a local map, knowing where Frog Rock is and that the rock painted like a lady bug is new ten years ago, knowing what corner stores sell the best 5cent candy, if it's worth taking the long way today because the clouds are lifting. The challenge of a blank map is better left to adventurers like my sister. She's always been braver than me, eager for new lands, new languages, new experiences. I've always been detail-oriented, sometimes obsessive over minutia. I don't have grand ambitions and would happily settle in the rainy Puget Sound for my entire life, deepening friendships, visiting with family in the mossy forests around the Hood Canal, watching Charlie stand front feet on the bow of a small speed boat bumping along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, standing on the pitch of a trail for the hundreth time feeling like it's the first as I watch cloud roll beneath me and see the waterways of my home slowly bleed toward the sea.

I did buy a house. I don't think I've even mentioned it in this blog yet. It's an '85 mobile home on 5 acres on the top of a forested canyon that opens up the the foothills of Mount Hood. You can see Mount Hood and Mount Adams from the backyard. Cricket song thickens the air and grasshoppers chatter away from any footfall. The ground is hard red clay, hesitant to absorb any rainfall but, remembering it's thirst, unforgiving to quench. There are pines rather than cedars but the Doug Firs seem to enjoy both the Willamette Valley and the Puget Sound equally. Massive limbed maples perch on the hillside, rather than the hard red Madronas back home. With the exception of the insects, it's a quiet place, and even the hum of the crickets and bees is the simple static of the countryside. I feel lucky to have such a humble and beautiful place to come home to. It took me two months to even get my address marked on the gravel easement. There was something appealing about not even having a road marker to let anyone know where I was. Tucked against timber and public lands, it's a small place to set aside everything else, to just be. And that's what I've been up to all summer - just being at home. It is home, in it's own sense. It's not familiar and, even though I hold the title to the land, I feel like a guest. But, it's a place I slowly adapt to my understanding of what home is and it adapts me to it's blue skies and autumn windstorms. I have something to learn there. It comes in installments. This summer I learned that home is still as elusive as ever and a monthly mortgage does not entitle one to a home, even though one may be paying off a house. But, when I force myself to be quiet and to stay open-minded to what this place has to say, I feel drawn in a little tighter. If I ever leave I like to think I'd be ready to give this place a hug rather than a handshake. We're getting to know each other slowly, but a lot of good things come from patience and respect. If I can remember just those two things, I'll appreciate this little piece of Oregon even if while missing what I still consider home.