I took an afternoon walk through the overgrown fields and sprawling woodland surrounding my parent’s place, my childhood home. There are hundreds of acres here, wrapping around the much more modest plot upon which our house was built; hundreds of acres which our family does not and has never owned, yet which we have always been privileged to enjoy. Falling short of a legal, material claim to this land, after some more than 30 years of ranging freely within it - many of the most enduring memories of my childhood and teen years forged upon it - this is a piece of God’s good earth that belongs to me somehow, nonetheless. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I belong to IT.
I suspect that it was around this time of year when our family first visited, and subsequently moved to purchase, our home those decades ago. Walking here, now, I am struck by the visceral, sensory memory of walking this land for the first time as a 10 year-old boy. The scent of the woods and the earth beneath my feet in the active process of thawing, some weeks removed from the cold grip of February now and on the cusp of Springtime, strikes me with force and takes me backward in time. I remember vividly the feeling of being introduced to this place that would become my home.
On the banks of Fresh Creek, I sit and pray. Growing up, these waters had no name that we were aware of. It has ever and always been to us, simply “The River”. Its proper name is a more accurate descriptor, as it is truly no more than a stream. But to a 10 year-old boy, loosed to range the woods and fields and waters of his childhood home, no brawling western river could have possessed more wonder or possibility.
It was ours, somehow. An unseen and sacred place, full to the brim with the holy mess and turmoil of youth. It was, and remains, home to me. For all the complexities and inevitable relocations that come with adulthood, the roots of my heart and memories will carry ever the scent and stain of this place, this soil.