What does home mean?
I have been considering the answers to that question for a while now, although nowhere near as long as I have been seeking the place. My most recent musings have tickled the edges of my spiritual path and how it has influenced my thoughts and feelings on this topic.
The house on Walnut Street [S. Barker]
When I was a small child home was simply the house in which I lived. My parents and siblings were there, it held comfortable and familiar material belongings, and most rules and expectations were clearly defined. I was fed and cared for and most of my needs were provided for. I really did not think about how to define home because I did not know anything else. For a time, I just accepted that the environment my parents provided was what home was supposed to be. There is no clear point that I can remember when that began to change but change it did.
My mother and father were good and loving parents who did the best they could with what they knew about children and parenting and life. I must acknowledge that I laughed a little as I wrote the last part of that sentence. Most of the parents I have ever known have done the best they can at the time; it is in later years that we understand and grieve all the mistakes we made.
Notwithstanding the best efforts of the people who first loved me, before I aged into the double digits, I stopped feeling like home was home. That feeling extended beyond the walls of the house on Walnut Street to the borders of the small town where I lived until I was fifteen, and also applied to the family I was born into as well as the communities in which I was raised. I suppose like many children who feel different for a myriad of reasons, I simply felt that I did not belong with those people or in those places. Before I had any real knowledge or understanding of faeries and other beings, I even wondered if I were some kind of changeling; if someday my real people would come back for me or reach out to me.
Those feelings of displacement continued through my later childhood and most of my adult life. When my family moved from New York to Texas I thought I might find a sense of home there. I did not. When we moved back to New York six years later, I was hopeful again, and in subsequent moves to North Carolina, then back to New York, and a final return to North Carolina I never gave up hope.
Having grown up living in rental houses and then spending most of my adult life doing the same, I also developed a sense of impermanence and instability regarding dwelling structures. However, it seemed logical to believe that I would settle into feeling and being home if I were ever able to buy a house. In 2019 my husband and I were fortunate enough to be able to do that, but it turns out that owning a house is not the same thing as finding an instant home.
Over all those years of living and seeking while feeling rootless, there were only two places that made finding home seem possible. The first is the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. I have written before about my connection to those mountains and the magical experiences I had there as a child. The closer I have come to understanding what home means me, the more often I think about the Adirondacks and the innate connection I have to them. What is it about them that has always made them feel like home?
The answer to that question is as easy as it is complex. The magic, the energy, and the spirits that inhabit the Adirondacks reacted to a child who was open to and aware of their presence. My ancestors had deep roots in that region and spent a great deal of time with those forests and waterways. Is it possible that my spiritual or genetic lineage helped to foster the depth of my connection to those beings and to those places? I believe so. I would not have understood this then, but the ancestry work I do now makes it clear that the life-relationship someone has with their gone-befores does not necessarily define the relationship with spirits that have crossed over. My disconnection from my family did not mean that my ancestors were disconnected from me.
Ancestors in the Adirondacs [RC Baker Sr.]
The first interactions I had with those beings helped to shape the essence of what I think of as my spiritual and magical taproot; my primary source of grounding in and relating to some portions of the magical world around me. The Adirondacks are a spiritual home to me because their spiritual essence is part of who I am.
This brings me to the second place that made home seem possible: the house and land I share with my husband (and now three cats, a dog, and 18 chickens,) which we call Bear Path Cottage. When I met this land in 2019 there was something within me – that magical taproot – that recognized her right away. I thought she could become home if I worked to make that happen.
The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack Mountains are not geologically related to each other, but in some areas there is a similarity between the nature of the spirits, magic, and energy. This part of western North Carolina seems to be one of those areas. When I first began working to build a relationship with this land and the land spirits, I believed that those external similarities were what created the feeling of the potential for this house and land to become home.
A pentacle pendant [Bill Rhodes]
This spring I have been engaged more deeply than ever in tending to my bond with all the beings who dwell in and around Bear Path Cottage. There is a saying that applies to the three years that it generally takes to establish a garden: First (year) it sleeps, then it creeps, then it leaps. My gardens are definitely leaping this year, and so is my connection to my land and land spirits. I have a very clear sense of the depths my spiritual taproot has reached here, and how deeply it drinks and nourishes itself with the essence of this land.
I used to think the modern application of the term “homestead” was rather pretentious; a look at me kind attention seeking term. Then I found myself using it more and more frequently to describe my home. The word comes from a combination of the Old English words ham – a dwelling, a place, a house, abode, residence and the Old English stede – place, position, standing, firmness, stability.”
The thought of my homestead representing a place of stability resonates with me. And I finally understand that while I may reside in and with this home, this home was created and resides within me.
As within, so without.
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