Home

It started with a simple game of fetch, me throwing a gnarled stick across the yard and the dog bounding happily after it. It's mid-January, but it feels like May, all balmy and warm and awake outside. The windows are open behind me and the heat is off. (What a difference a week can make!) I hear traffic and smell the subtle scent of a coming rain shower. I feel calm.

I looked up at the bare trees this afternoon in the yard and breathed in their height. Their branches cut the sky into stained glass pieces of blue and gray. (I've never seen a window as beautiful as the sky.) I followed those branches down, through crooked limbs and sturdy trunks to the floor of the woods, strewn with wet leaves all brown and orange and gray. I threw the stick one last time and watched the dog settle in for a good chew before slipping through the gate, making my way along well-worn deer paths. The trickling of water soon replaced the noise of the road, and our little white house disappeared behind a growing hillside covered in trees. Dirty glass bottles and crinkled beer cans, older than me, lay half submerged under leaves. (We need to clean them up before the underbrush starts growing again.) The breeze on my face felt warm. Birds darted to and from tall branches, in search of a meal. Squirrels, frozen as I approached, scurried toward their nests, tails twitching. I marveled at the way trees become ground, and ground gives way to tiny trees.  (Ashes to ashes, so they say.)

These woods are home. I feel that more and more. And today, walking slowly among those trees (the pure white sycamore, the sturdy oaks, the soft cedars, the baby pines, etc.) I wanted those woods to go on forever. I ached to follow the winding water of our little stream the whole way to the Shenandoah River a mile down the road, absorbing the beauty of the natural world I see every day but never really see every day. It made me feel blessed to be here on this plot of wooded land. It made me feel proud and determined to care for this little habitat on a hill full of birds and squirrels, rabbits and deer, three stray cats, two humans, and a dog.

And as I sit now, remembering this simple but profound stroll through the woods, I watch the tall, yellow grasses swaying from the window, and the house finches darting to and from the feeder, and I think, I love this lovely place I call home.