Nature and Being at Home

Dirty feet, morning mist on the lake, and hoodies with the aroma of campfire smoke—these are a few of my favorite things. Okay, okay, I don’t really like the gritty feeling of dirt-meets-sand on my feet, but I like the reason they’re dirty! Several weeks before we moved to England, we were able to go camping on family property in Michigan, and it was balm to my soul. I wanted to stay forever. The congestion of the Charleston area was getting to me—especially during months of being told to stay at home.

Growing up in rural Indiana, I took expansive land for granted, having a field next to all *six* of my childhood homes. I now see I wasn’t “landlocked”—I was land free. My college years were spent in the soft-spoken mountains of southeastern Tennessee, rolling hills of eery whispers and entrancing folklore, maybe true.

During my time there, I read story after story of human love, angst, and despair. Pivotal lessons on life and the hardest parts of love were yet to come. They were to come in the lush colors and humidity of Guam, the unassuming beauty of Indiana’s autumn, and the outskirts of Charleston, pretty but smug, and smelling a strange mix of magnolias and the paper mill.

Natural surroundings play a part in our lives—they are more than the backdrop. They are a contending character in our story.

Since college I’ve mostly lived in congested places— a small island and then crowded towns near Charleston, South Carolina. For the price of a drive, there was the ocean! In South Carolina, interstates and tight parking often kept me from havens of nature.

It seems I really do want that piece (peace) of land, as Wendell Berry writes:

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~The Peace of the Wild Things

While I cannot rest with the wood drake forever, I will reach for, notice, and rest in the moments I can. It’s frustrating when Dollar Generals are easier to find that the solitude of nature, but we will enjoy the little bits we can find.

Even in a small backyard, it can be found. Listen for the rustling leaves, gently touch the pinecones, smell the flowers, crane your neck for the wisps of sunset, purple, orange, and pink. Slipping out the door to check the mail and take a dirty diaper to the trash bin, the wind lifts my hair and touches my face. It can be jolting, this grace. Barefoot I walk through the poking crab grass, my feet curving around the hard lumps of earth. With each step, I am a bit freer than the one before. With each step, I feel a bit more at home.