Long Before

We returned yesterday from our Thanksgiving week with my brother and his wife just outside Asheville, North Carolina. While there we counted up the years, and with the exception of a gap when my parents were too debilitated to travel, my family has rented the same house in the mountains for the last 17 years. As always, it was a great time. On the way down we stopped to visit my new friend Leah at her farm in Tennessee and got to meet her daughter as well as goats, horses, a dog and a cat, and Captain Jack Sparrow, the mini donkey.

We didn't travel with Miss Hazel this year as she never seemed to enjoy being there, spending most of her time holed up under the dresser. Instead, we brought Zora (our new kitten-friend who showed up in our lives over the summer) but I think Miss Hazel must have left her instructions because she rarely left the toasty spot next to the radiator under a nightstand.

We went on walks, worked on a puzzle, read books by the fireplace, cooked delicious meals (my brother's lasagna!), hot tubbed on the deck, and made the yearly trip to Malaprops, one of my favorite book shops. Best of all, we were together.

It's been my brother's dream to find land on this mountain and build the house that my father designed for him years ago. He and his wife have been searching for the right spot in much the same way that John and I have been in Vermont. While our journeys aren’t intentionally similar, they nonetheless feel connected by the roots of our family history— time spent here in Asheville at Thanksgivings, and for us in Vermont, the "coincidence" of finding land in the little town where my parents honored their own dreams by buying a tiny piece of property before I was even born.

I love that my brother and I are both on a search to find "home" on land that is meaningful to us. There is something about the idea of putting down roots in a place that has already grown into your bones, as though it's been part of your future long before you knew it would be.

Writing Again

This blog, for the moment anyway, is an assignment. Janet, my writing mentor, suggested coming back to it as a low-pressure way to return to the page. I needed a break from the longer personal essays I've been working on— they are heavier work and leave me feeling bogged down sometimes— buuut I wound up not writing anything at all during that break. *Sigh*

Deadlines are usually good at motivating me. I am more likely to finish a project if there's some outside accountability, so I made it may summer goal to finish a new essay and polish up older ones to submit as a collection for an award with a September 1 due date, not so much for the idea of "winning" but for the satisfaction of having finished. I started out pretty excited about this but as June and July came and went I just wasn't getting anywhere. I'd sit down to write and just feel pressure, which completely destroyed any creative inspiration I had. I finally made the decision to let it go. I knew it was what I needed to do but I still felt lousy about it.

I emailed Janet, embarrassed to say I was "quitting." I thought she’d think I was a complete flake, stopping and starting and stopping again (It wasn’t the first time I'd done this.) “But that’s exactly how books get written!” she said when we had a phone call. Yes, there are writers who thrive with a disciplined and more regimented approach to their work, but the rest of us write in fits and starts. The going away and coming back is just part of the process. My yoga teacher says that meditation is an act of constantly starting over. I like that analogy. I never quit this, I just keep starting again.

A Place Called Home

I keep looking at this photo, knowing it's the news I want to share the most after such a long time away from writing: John and I are in contract for this beautiful piece of land — 10 acres of field and forest and that weathered old barn — in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. If all goes well this will be the view out our window in 4-ish years.

I lived with my family in Vermont on and off for over a decade, albeit on the other side of the state, and though my parents aren't there anymore, when I go back to visit the mountains still feel like home. After John hiked the entire Long Trail four years ago he knew that it felt like the right place for him too.

Last Thanksgiving I swirled down a Zillow rabbit hole, favoriting properties just for fun, but then over the winter it became a serious hunt. I love my life in Columbus but John and I know it isn't where we want to be forever; our dream is to build a little house on a piece of land with a view of stars and the sound of wind in the trees. A place where your ears don't have filter out background noise to get to the quiet.

Yes, there is an entire world of other places we could have chosen. My heart sings in big sky country, in the desert, at the sea. Why go back to a state I’ve lived in already? Why not go somewhere new? There are all kinds of things that I could name as reasons: I'm a New England girl, I still have friends there, I love all the snow. But in the end the decision is a simple one: it just feels right going back to the place I once called home.

(Plus, well, maple trees, maple syrup, maple sugar candy, maple creemees…)