Strap yourself to the tree with roots

[mhuzzell]

I came to a realisation today, cycling to town in the bright autumn of penetrating sunshine and dazzling cold: this is not my place.

This time three years ago, I was so happy to finally be out of the US that I fell utterly in love with Scotland, and was sure that I would want to live here forever. For most of the last three years I hadn't even considered that I might return. Now I'm so homesick I can't stop thinking about North America.

The tricky thing is that I don't miss the US in the slightest. It's the land itself that tugs me like a magnet. The flora and fauna. I miss forests, and individual trees. I miss whole species: cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, hummingbirds; sweetgums, red maples, tulip poplars, even fucking loblolly pines. Someone on our road has planted goldenrod in their front garden, and when I first noticed it, I actually stopped dead in my tracks just to touch it. Even the air here seems foreign to me, sometimes, for all that I'm actually pretty acclimatised. I can feel it deep in my core; I miss my homeland with my whole body.

Then, of course, there's my family. I guess I was lucky, in this century, to have grown up so close (geographically and emotionally) to such a large extended family. But that kind of strength of 'home' really gets into your bones. I think the idea of it sustained me, somewhat, when I first left. But these days, I just want to get back to my family, my forests, my roots. Except that I really, really don't want to return to the United States.

Comments

[aberwyn.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling. Many times in the past 40 years or so I've thought about emigrating, and every time it's Northern California itself that's kept me here. All my family here is dead now, but I really don't want to leave the landscape and 45 years worth of friendships. At my age, I couldn't, most likely, anyway, so the point's moot. :-)

[lizardist.livejournal.com]

This land is your land
This land is my land
From California
To the New York islands
From the gulfstream waters
To the redwood forests
This land was made for you and me

...

While I was walking
That ribbon of highway
I saw a sign that
Said 'private property'
But on the back side
It didn't say nothin'
This land was made for you and me

elections and all that jazz

[(Anonymous)]

Shannon and I are considering Canada if McCain gets elected... this in spite of the fact that when you and I met him in person at the bookstore, he was an overwhelmingly nice fellow. I guess that his party's rhetoric has ruined him at this point. In the good news department: the republican ticket is running very scared and is some 8 or 10 points behind in the polls.. so they are saying that Obama will win. ... concerning your post. I do find that from the Raleigh POV, I miss the mountains & the coast simultaneously. I need to walk Umstead more often to get through that. Have also discovered Shennick Forest nearby which is delightful. Raleigh seems to be such a nuetral sort of existence. Spring is exquisite; the rest of the year bores me climate-wise. We have had a series of perfect-weather days. Fine crisp fall days. The leaves are beginning to shiver out their last bits of green and blow away. ...the house next door under construction ripped a huge hole in the earth, and I was able to see a granitic-mica schist vein running across the bank, and now know that same vein runs under the very yard I pranced across as a child. Some sort of metamorphic event... Africa plowing into North America... caused these rocks to melt and re-fuse into new wonders. Some quartz is so clear that you can see through it, and I imagine a prism bouncing thru. A small shock of mica peels from a side. I would taste it but know only that it is dirt and maybe even home. love you so much, daddy