YA’LL!
I am home.
I am home in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, time-softened ranges formed over one billion years ago.
I am home to horizons of blue ridges shaping generations of my family, some of them native to this land, some of them pioneers on the first frontier.
I am home for the first time in thirteen months to the sun setting softly behind undulating ranges so familiar as to be images seared from birth in my mind and yet, on these days of this week traveling from north to south along these southern Appalachians, I am home to these sunsets on these hills for the first time.
And making my way south, I came to the Shenandoah Valley and pastoral knolls populated with fields colored gold and cows and the occasional crab-apple tree. And then came barns for drying tobacco—the barns of the hills and hollers in these parts that stand tall and narrow and of felled black walnuts and elms. And for the first time, I loved tobacco for what it means to the history and heritage of this place.
And as the land changed from pastoral to steeply mountainous and the roads began to curve and climb the old Blue Ridge, I saw for the first time—and again—these ridges meet the sky. And I watched them breathe. And I watched the sky drape billowy bands over layers of mountains three shades deeper in the distance than Carolina blue.
And on my last morning on the road, just a few hours from home, I woke to the song that has been the waking song of this place for longer than there is time and a sound I had not known I had not heard these months until I did. It was the sound of a cardinal waking the new day into being. And I wept, and I knew I was home.
And when mid-afternoon on Friday, I came to the sign welcoming me and all who travel this way to North Carolina and I saw the familiar mountain mist drifting down familiar slopes from familiar ridge to familiar road, I signaled to my family that I would be home a day sooner than I had said, and a smile drew itself across my mouth and eyes the likes of which I have only ever seen on a face of glee. This was the face that became me.
And when we gathered just as we did the night before I began this journey last year, I did not weep as I had warned that I might. Right there, in an instant of embrace, a whole year collapsed into a day, and just like that, it was as if I had never been away. The calls and texts and images shared across a year had sustained us. And still, we had had no meals together, no touch, no holidays nor helping hand for this or that, and even so, we’d missed nothing but the embodied immediacy of one another, and now today we share.
I am home.
With family and loved ones, I am home.
With the people and place of my belonging, I have come home.
And the coming home whispers of home and belonging as one and the same. Where we belong is where we come home, and the whispers bring me to reflections we explored here together way back when I was in the Yukon, reflections about being long together: that belonging comes with the long haul, which some might say is of time and togetherness—togetherness not only with people but with place, and time not as the marching of hands around a face but as the very act of presence itself.
Thank you all for making this long haul.
Ever in gratitude and with love,
Renée
PS. For all of you who’ve asked the van’s name, and I hadn’t come up with one, I’ve got news for you: Now that she has brought me safely this far, we’ve decided to call her
Sweet Petunia
I’m just bawling... this Shenandoah Valley girl whose people are 7 generations Blue Ridge born & bred and who reads your Substack from the Pacific Northwest... . I’ve loved sharing your journey--your perspective stirring me. And as I read this chapter, I’m shot through with love and longing for these mountains we both call home. Thank you
Exactly what I yearn to return to. I can't get that feeling back. Ever. My family is gone and "home" isn't a place anymore after moving over 40 times... it's mythical dream held deeply inside my imagination that has threatened to break me during this time of year for as long as I can remember.
This year for the first time I took a different approach. I stopped yearning for "home" and decided to start having new experiences and learning to resurface the memory neurons into a different scape.
Great read, I wanted to cry but held back. I am on a mission.