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Living Arts
The Journey Home:
The Call to Stay and the Call to Roam
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
I have a few friends who spent their early years in one neighborhood in a single house before moving out on their own. But as I write this, the average American is switching his/her primary residence once every three to four years. By the time I “ran away” for the last time at age 16, I had lived in and tried to attach myself to 18 or more places. Our family moved for any number of reasons, such as to get closer to a new job or farther from our past. Because we found a better deal or a more favorable climate. Because the landlord decided he wanted the house for his daughter and ran a hose into the bedroom to run us out. Because another rental was sold out from under us to make way for an apartment complex, once its aging owner couldn’t cover the ballooning taxes.
There were always lots of reasons for us to move, but most played on the word “too,” pronounced emphatically in recurrent moments of dissatisfaction—the rooms were “too small,” the neighbors “too noisy,” the crime rate “too high.” Each house or town was in turn pronounced too big or small, too rainy or dry, crowded or inconvenient, built-up or isolated, rich or impoverished, degraded or pretentious.
Mom was astounded to see before she died how long I’d spent in a single area, in the same canyon, on the same land, in the same cabin. She was especially surprised having never stayed anywhere longer than a couple of years, remaining in some places less than a month, and averaging over two moves per year.
It amazes me when I reflect on those first few years on my own, a period during which I considered myself a rootless “gypsy.” There’s admittedly a degree of humor in this scene: a red-bearded, motorcycle-riding American beach-boy identifying with the dark-tressed outcasts of old Europe. I’d nonetheless been taken in by the movie images of skulking fortune tellers and twirling fire-lit damsels, silk headbands and gilded daggers, and wild-eyed horses pulling their homes-on-wheels from the shadows of one town or forest to the next. I felt a particular attraction to the round-topped wooden wagons with colorfully painted wheels, filled with everything a family could possibly need, ready at a moment’s notice to be battened down and pulled towards the next promising vista. I later tried for the same look and feel, with a cedar shake camper perched on a Jeep pickup truck, and subsequently in a school bus art gallery. I could relate to the expression “home is where you hang your hat” or “home is where you lay your head” as I found myself at rest on strange couches, pillows of barn hay or boughs of pine. I even wrote it on my clothes the way other kids squiggled skulls and hearts full of initials on their jeans, “ruining” the Levi jacket my mother had sent me. Philosophical graffiti. Points of reference for the intentionally homeless.
In my travels, I fell in love the sea caves and coves of La Jolla, California, the giant moss-laden fir trees of Oregon and Washington, the archaic geology of the Tennessee hills and the laconic pace of the Rio Grande at Big Bend. I found myself becoming attached to particular regions, those with a characteristic feel and energy that resonated with my own.
While every place is glorious in its own way, offering its own unique expression of landform and lifeform, there were still certain locations that stood out, evoking a deeper response within me: that cloister of crystal clear rivers known as the “Klamath Knot,” those parts of Colorado’s San Juan mountains still unimpacted by trails, and the ponderosa covered lava heaves of the Mogollon Rim. I’d learned to listen carefully and appreciatively to the varied voices of the land, the deep baritone monologue of Louisiana bayous and the shrill communication of wind-whipped Wyoming mountain tops. It was clear, nonetheless, that there were particular places that solicited commitment and inspired loyalty. Promises of a potential relationship. 
Entreaties. Voices of the land that clearly said to me, “Stay. Please, stay.”
This is without a doubt the power that inspires the traveler to slow down and notice more, the weary migrant to finally settle in one place, and the seed to send its root in the direction of the core. It is perhaps this more than rational choice or casual circumstance that puts the brakes on spinning wheels, soothes the beat of restless rambling hearts, and seduces folks on their way to somewhere else to stop. For all the stimulation our traveling provides, we may eventually find we’re unable to give wholly of ourselves to so many different suitors for our time and hearts. A part of me still feels like a “gypsy,” an animal driven by a maddening wanderlust, and a product of a society of discontent. But I have grown to mistrust such predilection, to resent dissatisfaction, to commit wholly to those I love most and the place I cannot live without.
It seems our kind is forever under the influence of two opposing instincts: the urge to keep on moving, and the call to remain. In the first case, we’d be wise to connect deeply to the spirit of every diverse place we come into contact with, finding home in each. In the latter, we agree to a special relationship with but a single home, demonstrating our affection through our artful care of it. In the course of our lives, we hopefully learn to balance the desire to stay with the urge to roam, with all our meanderings tracing in time the path of our journey home.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is a teacher and founder of Animá nature-informed practice and the author of seven related books. He and his partners offer empowering online Medicine Woman, Shaman Path, and Path of Heart correspondence courses, as well as online counsel and healing consultations. Readers of Vision Magazine are invited for wilderness retreats, vision quests, student internships and events at the Animá Sanctuary, a wild river canyon and ancient place of power: Animá Learning & Retreat Center, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830. www.animacenter.org.