Home Again, I Think

The canyon wren is singing. A feathery cloud drifts in a porcelain blue sky, morning shadows traverse hills that are dry and summer-blonde, and the sycamores along the creek are leafy again. The sea in the distance is fading into a haze. It’s my first Sunday morning after a month away, and it’s going to be hot today, and if I were smart, I’d head outside and take advantage of this cooler time of day, but I feel compelled to type out a few words documenting my re-entry. Writing is a trusty tool in my survival kit, a way of soothing myself, of getting grounded. I write my way through some of the wobbliness, then walk.

So here I sit, tapping.

I realize it’s a privilege to be able to travel, but these big trips take a lot out of us, physically and emotionally. My mind is all mixed up and the pieces haven’t yet arranged themselves into coherent patterns. I am missing our family in England, of course, and I’ll get used to that because I have no choice, but the balm of home has yet to kick in.

“I envy you,” says our neighbor David, offering a different perspective. “I love that re-entry feeling, when everything is unreal.” He returned a few weeks ago after a long trip abroad, and as the sense of unreality and displacement has begun to wear off, the demands, work, and stresses of being here are more difficult to ignore. For David, being in that jet-lagged space was like lingering inside a mirage or drifting under a spell, an altered consciousness, with worries muffled. “I wish I was still feeling that way,” he says, “just floating around and out of it. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

I suppose that’s one way of looking at it, and I’ll try, but to me, this transition period feels more like a bewildering condition than a magic spell. Tasks loom large and clear while I lack the energy to tackle them, and there’s no cure for the chronic longing. We live in a wondrous place, to be sure, but it is standing apart from me right now, withholding its embrace. It has a dusty, abandoned look, a “work-in-progress-that-will-never-be-finished” kind of feeling. Plants in pots are desiccated, my vague attempts at landscaping are half-dead, the weeds are tall and deep, dry leaves are scattered everywhere. Damage from the winter’s heavy rains is still in ripped-apart stages of being repaired.

Meanwhile, a bobcat saunters nonchalantly up the driveway, reclaiming his terrain, two young coyotes forage beneath the orange tree and yelp excitedly when the train goes by, and a small gray mouse darts across the kitchen floor. Voluptuous grapefruits are rotting on the ground.

We always knew we weren’t in charge, but we are too tired right now to sustain the effort of grooming and taming. 

Then again, isn’t it glorious to witness the tenacity of nature? We’re the interlopers, after all, and we try to coexist and be good stewards, but it’s oddly comforting to glimpse the resilience of wildness, even when it’s not in our best interest.

And mostly it’s the wildness that saves us. I do know that.

But human connection helps too. I stopped by to say hello to Aristotle, who set out an array of chocolates to choose among. He prefers the ones from Madison, Wisconsin, but I nibbled on toffee from Nashville, and we sipped spicy ginger tea and talked about serendipity and the meaning of life, which apparently has something to do with kindness and being in the moment.

A windy walk up the canyon in the cool of evening brought further solace. I touched the bark of the lion oak and some of its strength and majesty transferred to me. A lantern moon glared onto our faces in the night and I didn’t mind being awake for it.

A few friends have reached out, and I went to the seashore with Diane once, took off my shoes, and waded into the water up to my calves. That’s as wet as I get, but it was fun.

And yes, even now, the canyon wren is singing. 

I am thankful for our safe return, for this magnificent moody place that is never ours, and for beloved friends and family near and far.