Night swept in suddenly, scooping up the crispy brown trees in its swift descent. I was alone on the crushed limestone path, finishing a run, listening to a podcast, watching one season slip headlong into the next. When I entered back into the neighborhood, the first stars were blinking awake in the night sky and the porch lights of the little houses were glowing warm. Parents ushered kids off of the driveways and into bed, others sipped beers on their front stoops watching autumn arrive.
I didn’t just admire these homes as I ran by, I ached for them. I hungrily took in the site of this cozy neighborhood, starving for the simple security of home. Despite the promises of previous generations, belonging to any one place for any significant period of time feels exceedingly impossible. A friend tells me we are collectively grieving the failed delivery of that promise. The poet Joy Sullivan says “First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives you’re not living.”
Some days it feels like I have been in search of home all my life. I plant herbs and flowers in plots of nutrient deficient rented dirt just to watch them wither and die nine months later as I pack yet another cardboard box of my belongings. When I filled out my loan for the camper, the application provided just three lines to cover my last five years of addresses. “What do I do if this isn’t enough space?” I asked the woman helping with my application. My last three addresses only covered 27 months. She picked up the paper and squinted. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s never been a problem before.”
I am itching to leave Bellingham. My skin is crawling. I am one week into camper life and people keep asking, “How is it going?” This is how it is going: I have utterly changed everything about my daily existence so that one day I too can perhaps have this hollow promise of home. Of roots. Of grounding. Of belonging. I am grateful for the simplicity. I am anxious about the austerity. I am desperate for the freedom it will bring. I am eager to see familiar landscapes and also perhaps discover, in the great swaths of the unfamiliar, something like home.