Going home

The past few days have been very peaceful down here on the home front. I've been doing a little research into homecoming lately--not the homecoming with the fancy dresses and the sparkly tiaras, not the homecoming with the mini school buses painted in university colors and thousands of screaming fans at football games, but coming home to where you're from. Now, where you're from might really mean a football stadium at a university, it might mean your hometown, it might mean your adopted-home town. I've learned that going home means a lot of different things to different people. To me, homecoming means getting out of the city, which might seem kind of hypocritical since I was born in one of the biggest cities in the US of A, Atlanta. But in my homecoming dream, this home out of the city, into deep rural America, is where I'm meant to be. I wrote a poem a while back called Dirt. I feel it really encapsulates how much I love rural life and how it is a part of me. You see, when I was little, my Mom read us the Little House stories--stories about life on the prairie, life in the forests--and I always thought that was what real life was supposed to be. I was entranced by the past, by the dustbowl and the Oregon Trail. But I grew up in the city. We never went camping, never fully dove into wilderness. Yes, we went on nature escapes to North Georgia every summer to see Unicoi and the beautiful start of the Appalachian trail. But that was just a fun vacation. Real life meant going to ballet class and school, sitting in traffic, my Dad catching the bus with our neighbor to go downtown, trips to the aquarium and zoo to see the exotic things... Life was NOT the exotic things. The exotic things were kept in their own little section of the world, safe from us and we were safe from them. Then one day my parents told me we were moving to Kentucky. And boy, what a head have I. 
Moving to Kentucky to me meant moving to the most "hick" place in the world. Though, I was little and un-learned and naive about these things. I didn't realize that we would still be in the city--the glittering electric CITY with the traffic and the people and the shopping and tons of glamorous schools with all kinds of people. But I was a little girl about to have her whole world shifted. Gradually, I came to accept Kentucky, then to love Kentucky, then to leave Kentucky, come back, and never want to leave again.  Kentucky is most definitely NOT the most "hick"place in the world. Granted, in my travels through the commonwealth, I have seen some pretty tiny places with people very different than myself. Many of these people don't have dishwashers and wouldn't trust one if it was recommended as the very best dishwasher in the world. But that's not my point. 
My point is, that I found my home. I found my home in what was once the great frontier. When Daniel Boone walked through the Cumberland Gap, he famously uttered the words, "Heaven must be a Kentucky kind of place." That I agree with.
I didn't always think that, though. When I moved here, I thought I was loosing civilization, and along with it, the people who understood what civilization was. There's a lesson in that, I think we all could learn from. Not only are people's ideas of civilization radically different, but this radical difference isn't so important. We all have a home--even if we are homeless, we belong somewhere--be it in people's hearts, in a town or organization, a country, a house. We all belong to this earth--unless you're reading this somehow from another planet. I have found that I belong to nature. That is to be my life. 
A few springs ago, I read Wendell Berry's Home Economics which utterly changed my life. I looked around myself at the city with its glowing lights and its traffic, its cigarette butts and broken down houses, its throngs of people, and realized that I don't belong here. The city and I don't speak the same language. Furthermore, I realized that I am not whole here. That doesn't mean that the rural life doesn't have litter and broken down houses, because it does. It has a lot of problems. It's not some golden life I can just slide into whenever I want. I've learned it takes a lot of work and sacrifice, hard choices and long days. 
Now, I'm not there yet. I started to immerse myself in nature the summer after I read my first Wendell Berry book. I camped out for a week without my phone or any other technology, and just lived. I started planting big gardens. I looked at that life I had and realized it was a life I didn't love. I decided to become a farmer. When I went to college, I chose a school in a rural area and majored in Agroecology. But even then, Boone was a big place. Well, a little place, with a gazillion people. But I was still able to start learning about farming and start finding a life that I could finally embrace with a full heart. It was my dream. My dream brought me home, though, to Kentucky, to the city. And here I am, waiting for the day I will finally go home to rural Kentucky and build my house, have my family, and a little plot of land to call my own. 
In the famous words of John Denver, "Blow up your TV, throw way your paper, go to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try to find Jesus on your own."  
Dirt
And so, I’ll die a poor farmer woman,
I’ll follow you into the fields,
And never look back,
Damn the rest of the world
Damn the internet,
Damn society,
Damn it all.
I’ll die a poor farmer woman,
In your old, grey arms,
Surrounded by our babies,
And grandbabies,
And maybe they’ll have babies,
And you’ll carry me out in the fields,
And place me under a tree,
Without a box,
Without a—doctor,
Just let me return,
To where I am s’posed to be.
We’ll be dirt poor farmers,
Dirt poor farmers with old draft horses,
And work the land,
And eat fruit from the trees,
And smash it on each others faces,
And be happy.
And we’ll stay up late because we can,
And point at the stars,
And lay out in the tall grasses,
And make loud, messy love,
And wake up in the sunshine,
And I’ll let you take my picture--
If you still want.
And so I’ll die a poor farmer woman,
Married to a poor farmer by the Father,
And we’ll have babies,
Without worrying,
Like other people do,
Because it’s us, it’s us, and we’re not like other people,
We’re dirt poor farmers who sit in the fields and never worry--
No, we worry.
We worry about the rain,
And we worry about the deer,
And we worry about the soil,
And bugs,
And getting sick,
And staying warm.
But—but--
I love you, damn it!
And so, maybe I’ll die,
A poor farmer woman,
Bleeding to death in your arms,
A dead baby stuck inside me,
And you, bawling your eyes out,
And I’ll ask you to kiss me to sleep,
And I’ll be happy,
I won’t worry,
God lives in these grasses,
And when it’s over,
You can carry me out,
And lay me in the ground,
Without a box,
And without a gravestone,
And know that I am happy,
To be where I’m s’posed to be.
I am with you.
Finally.