January 4, 2004
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Home
When the plane took off this morning, in that moment the landing gear lifted from the desert tarmac and the mountains slunk down under my view, I felt this melancholy wrench in my heart. It was like the ground were part of me and I were being pulled and separated from myself. Tonight I sleep a thousand or so miles away from where I started, and I feel as if I’ve been stretched thin over the whole continent.
How is it possible to love a place, like you might love another person, or child, or a memory of tenderness? How do you fall in love with the land? How do you hold that expanse at night, or kiss its bright face, or look into its endless eyes? Could it be the same thing, like a soulmate, like other kinds of love?
Edward Abbey said something about every person having an innate place they are bound to, and a sense of belonging that is tied to the land. Slowly it is becoming clear to me that I’ve always been called to that one place, and looked for signs of it in everything I know. It is even contained in the ways I love Bryon, who lead me home after being away for so long.
The year began by appearing to fall apart. I honestly thought I might lose him to all the small vicious nothings that had been eating away at us from the previous year. In the place I most loved, I felt a little lost, a little impossible, and a little unreal.
But he is like that earth under my feet, and his eyes are like the color of sage, and he is tawny and strong like the hills, he is my map and my guide; when I think of home I see the evening light on his skin, and my love manifests itself, and I know where I belong. I am home.
On my last day in New Mexico, we rose early and watched the sunrise. I slowed every second in my head, to make that vision last. I spent the whole day trying to absorb every moment, every color, the blue and tarnished gold, the subtle red and dry green, every line and gulley in the mountains, the shapes and shadows of the clouds…..I wandered through that day, counting the hours until I knew I would be leaving, and saying goodbye.
All of my resolution for this year is focused on being there. In only a little while, I’ll find myself home again.
