home vs Home

So the distinction here is the capitalization.

From the outside is it a small distinction, but from the inside it is pretty darn huge.

It started when I was little.  My immediate family unit lived in California, quite distant from the extended family in east Tennessee.  During the school year, I lived at home, with my mom and dad and brother and dogs.  I built a life there, a school career, life-long friends, work experience, scouting experience, relationship experience.  There are LOTS of things I learned about how to live in California. When I got older and left home, it was clear that my essence is shaped by living there, by having a home there...

But during the summers, we came Home.  We spent months "back east" with the grandparents and cousins and history of it all.  It was clearly an effort by my parents to tie their present to their past, to show us where they came from, to help us build a sense of personal history.  It was all about what southern Appalachia is...

When I reached the age to leave home, I knew I needed to come Home.  I applied to all southern schools, and ended up in the Shenandoah Valley.  At 18 years old, I named it for the first time:

My older cousin & I are driving through east Tennessee from my grandmother's house to another cousin's house.  The cousin with me had just discovered us - (her story is hers) - and had been raised in New Jersey.  She asked me about who I wanted to be, what I was Iike...

I looked out the window at the passing farms & hills...

"I do not know for sure where I will go, but I know that I need to be Here.  These hills, these trees, these mountains - they call to me.  I know that my soul has always lived here..."

"That just triggered chills down my spine.  Wow.  That is True."

And it was.  It is. I conozco these mountains...

I have now been in these mountains for 20 years.  I love EVERY minute of my drive on I-81, every time I make it.  I went to camp in the North Carolina highlands.  I keep finding myself returning to the mountains for trips, exploring the nooks and crannies of the Great Smokies, Pisgah, Cherokee, the Blue Ridge.  I live now in the Blue Ridge, and we explore Skyline Drive every chance we get - have done so for nearly 10 years.  Even when newly married, living in the city, the mountains called to us - we "went for a drive" every other weekend.

When I was maybe 14, in that time when you are trying to define yourself, my friend asked me: if you were a geographical feature, a type of terrain, what would you be?

"Water!" I blurted out, but what my mind saw was bigger:
A lake or river, wide enough to reflect the sky, deep enough to harbor ecosystems, caressing the mountains, carrying little bits of places it passes to share and deposit in future travels.  Babbling, giggling over and around rocks holding ancient information, while trees watch patiently, and life scurries over, around, and in me.  I saw mountains towering over the waterline, the birds who swim at the surface, and my mind sank into the murky depths, with hidden crevices of lurking fish and turtles.  I saw in my mind every stream we had crossed hiking the Smokies, the TVA lake that my grandparents lived on, what I later encountered canoeing the Shenandoah and Potomac...

I wrote about that Old Mountain Magic a few years ago, when the spring hills conjured voices for me.  

On Thanksgiving day this year, I drove that all day drive down I-81 to I-40.  I watched the sun rise on one slope, and the sun set on another.  I rode ridge after ridge, up and down... In these winter months, you can see the mountains themselves, the stone jutting through the tangle of dormant plants, the pastures that have been carved from the hills have that monotone hue that lets you see the texture of the place.  The stone waits, patiently catching and absorbing every snowflake, storing their glory for a time to come.  Every time I looked out my windows at those undulating heights, my hands felt like they were running through velvet folds, my lips across satin sleeves.  These mountains trigger my most heart felt sensations (my fabric habit)...  My body ached with the need to just be in these mountains, the pleasure of remembering and imagining time watching them...

I love fall too, when the wisdom of the trees turns to sleep, and their colors make the mountains look like piles of MnMs.  When each and every leaf becomes a single note in the epic opus of the change of seasons!  Each is masterful, a miraculous statement of glorious color and shape, worthy of collection and display, begging to be honored.  The season goes through movements like an orchestral masterpiece, with colors shifting from tip to trunk, until the music ends as a sleepy blanket, covering the earth, promising to nourish the the coming awakening...

When spring comes, my heart SINGS!!!! It is as if I can hear the buds pushing their way out into sun - like when a baby drags itself across the floor, or children get restless 5 minutes before recess.  I am sure that I can hear the tinkling of fairies and see the ghosts of gnomes being nursemaids to the awakening.  As the season passes, trees pass through their teen years again, showing off, dancing!  I tend to get stressed, too fenzied, but also sense the promise that fabulousness is right around the corner..

Cuz summer, baby!  THAT is the BOMB!  Goodness, I am filled with so much zest and furve!  Every day is a celebration!  Love lives in every vision, every exchange!  Every look, every smell, every rounded stone and bristly branch, every bustling animal and every riotous plant brings tears to my eyes! THE GLORY!!! The intensity fills me so deeply.  My soul knows that it has lived here forever - when the mountains were young and as they've smoothed with time...

I have lived and loved here.
I have loved and lost here.
I am here now.
I will be here again.

Like my Twin Flame, this Place is eternal for me.  Here is my beloved friend, the lover that touched my soul, my comforting embrace, the teacher that pushes me beyond my self-set limits, the dog that walks beside me through hell, the rock that protects me from dangerous elements.  I know that Here I have gone too far, and not gone far enough.  Here is where passion, life lived fully, overtakes me...

I have been thrown for a couple loops this week.  My time is needed by others.  I truly do not know when I will go home again - ailing family needs me...

But I know, that I am Home.  What ever challenges this life brings, I will transcend them.  We each get to choose which moments will haunt us eternally - and I choose to be haunted by LOVE!  

There has been, or will be another time when I was, or will be complete with you... here.