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

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