Home: Part Three

I first wrote blog posts about the sense of "home" in November and December of 2012. Nearly four years later, I still haven't figured it out.

A little less than two weeks ago, I took a right turn off highway 201 onto Moose River Outpost’s three-mile long dirt driveway, and I came home.

It was 12:30am and so dark that the high beams from the fifteen passenger van I was driving barely cut through the blackness of the forest. In the first row of passenger seats, one of my dearest friends, Joanie, sat, excitedly talking with me about our hopes for the summer and how good it was to be back at camp. She had picked me up at the Boston Logan airport at 8am, and we had spoken of little else in the hours since. My co-leader for the summer, Sam, had landed at the airport at 2pm and dozed at that moment in the passenger seat of the van. Though he had insisted he could co-pilot just fine, he had only returned from his study abroad trip to Scotland four days before and was delirious from jet-lag, wavering between slight snoring and moments jerked awake to add non-sensical comments to our conversation. The back three rows of seats were folded down to make room for the absolutely enormous moose head and antlers we had picked up with the van from our brother and sister camp in New Hampshire. 

All in all, it was a pretty typical MRO transportation experience. 

I twisted and turned the van—lovingly referred to as “Secret Service” — down the same dirt road I had driven on my way back from countless town runs, contemplating how strange it was to be back in a place that part of me had thought I would never see again. And yet, as Joanie and I dropped Sam off at his cabin (barely making sure that he actually managed to wake up enough to make it to the cabin) and pulled the van in front of ours, it simultaneously seemed as if I had never left. When we stumbled, bleary eyed and travel weary, into the dining hall the next morning to greet the rest of the staff, we were met not with the awkward hellos of acquaintances who hadn’t seen one another in a long time, and instead with the casual yet excited embrace of good friends who had been only separated for mere hours or days. The ten months apart seemed to slip away, leaving only the fact that my boss’s son can now actually talk as evidence of the time apart.  

In short, it felt like home. 

I’m starting to lose track of what “home” even means. Is it where you receive mail? If that’s the case, I’ve had four different homes in four different time zones over the last year. Is it where you’ve spent the most time? If we average my lifetime, that’s Wenatchee, but if we average the past twelve months, then Ireland is my home. Is it where you feel the most comfortable? In many ways, that’s quickly becoming a small little camp nestled just outside Jackman, Maine. Is the age old cliché true — is home “where your heart is?” Mine’s a fragmented home, then, with pieces scattered across the planet in the people and places that captured small chunks of my soul. 

I was talking with my coworkers last night about this idea of “home,” and how terribly awful the transience of your early twenties can be. Most of us aren’t married or dating. Many of us go to school a good distance away from our families. All of us desert our everyday lives for two months of the year to let poor fashion run rampant and bond together around the tables in a dining hall, the canoes on a lake, the bunks in Pamola cabin. We live a nomadic existence, where many of our belongings fit in just a few suitcases and we never stay in one place longer than four months. It’s hard to know where home is. 

It seems so much harder to answer the question of “where is home” than it ever was before. Bozeman’s not home and hasn’t been for a long while. Ireland, though I logged more months there than I will have acquired during both summers in Maine, never felt like home. Wenatchee isn’t even my home anymore, but rather this pit stop I love dearly where I can refuel, switch out the clothing in my suitcase, and see some beloved faces. Chicago will be home, but it’s not yet. I feel a little like the Israelites, wandering around the desert, waiting for the Promised Land where I can plant my feet and stay awhile. I simply want a place to dwell.

So for this summer, this one right here? I claim Jackman, Maine as home. I will soak in the summer sun from the middle of Heald Pond while doing yoga on a paddle board. I will climb to the top of the rock wall, aided by the excited voices of my fellow staff cheering me on. I will sit on wood lawn chairs in the quiet of the night and watch the lightening bugs twinkle. I will laugh hard with my co-leader, whether we’re planning skits or mounting that giant moose head on the wall or just shooting the breeze. I will speak openly and boldly and honestly and passionately and lovingly to the people around me. I will ask good questions, listen intently, and care about the answers. I will pray bold prayers that I know only God can answer. I will take moments of silence to hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit in the wind. I will throw on giant bubble balls and purposefully crash myself into my peers. I will sing loudly without caring who hears it or how good it sounds. I will live fully here. I will dive deeply here. I will engage wholeheartedly in community, because maybe, just maybe, “home” is more about being connected to the body of Christ and less about the who, what, where, or when. 

I will make this place home, even if it’s only for seven more weeks. 

I’m confident I can make them count.