The Road Home

I stood at my back door today and looked out over the back acreage - the prairie as I like to think of it. Past the orchard is the wild, untamed portion of our land.  The dry grass stands knee high and bends and blows gently in the wind.  I was taking a break from the kitchen to survey the yard, my loud unruly children and the vast expanse of earth past the line of trees.

In that moment I could understand the pull of the field, the untamed, the wild.  Why people left homes and family and cities behind and crossed the mountains and then went further until they carved out a homestead, a farm, a town from the nothing that had greeted them.

The wanderlust of our ancestors whispered to me across the ages.

I stepped out into the pasture to check on the animals and as I filled a bucket with water a gentle breeze kicked up, brushing my hair across my sun warmed cheek.  I looked out over the place we had carved out from nothing, the fence posts and barbed wire and mesh that blood and sweat and hard labor had put up and felt satisfied.  At peace.  The empty land behind my back called to me, begging me to tame it, turn it into something, till it under.  It was the whisper of promise.  Of possibility.  

The pioneer in me ached in response: the land was a siren and her song was spellbinding.

It was a moment of transcendence, of standing in the moment, in that field, and knowing down to my bones there was nothing else I would rather do, no where I would rather be, than looking out over my land.  Surveying my animals.  Tending my children.

There are so few moments in life that captivate so completely.  That speak in such silent volumes.

I was blessed that day with understanding.  It can be a mystery even to myself what would make a soul choose this life when there are so many other, easier, paths.  The part of me rose up to answer the wind over the grass spoke a truth: there is no other path for me.  This is the only road home.