Roots and wings

While renewing my passport a couple of weeks ago I was asked to fill in my permanent address. I laughed a little to myself because I haven't really had a permanent address in my adult life. The longest I've lived in one place is Northern Arizona for a record four and half years. I thought for a brief moment and wrote down my parent's physical address. Which isn't really a normal address but a mile post on the George Parks Highway in rural Alaska. The house I grew up in from the age of four to eighteen in an area called Rock Creek, about 30 miles North of Denali National Park. All at once the distance between here and there seemed enormous. And it is, I currently live about 13,000 miles away from "home." 

Last week we stayed in a house right on Lake Victoria. I awoke one morning to the sound of the wind from the lake rushing up to the house. For a moment as I laid in bed in the early dawn hours I was brought back to my childhood listening to the wind whipping outside, warming up cold winter days. My home town is nestled in a valley and experiences high winds quite frequently. I could almost smell the scent of fresh mountain air that comes with those winds and memories of my childhood came flooding back. A time that has long passed but is the foundation of the person I am today. The hours spent playing outside in the creek and forest, picking weeds from the garden, playing with and caring for the numerous animals we had over the years, birthday parties, hosting community barbecues, Led Zepplin and the Beatles, trudging through the snow in search of the perfect scraggly Christmas tree, fighting, laughing, crying, reading stories and searching for Waldo, Saturday morning cartoons, raisin smiley faces in my oatmeal, …. too many to capture here. There are days that I become homesick for a time that has passed and a place that will forever hold a huge part of my heart.

My daughter enjoying Rock Creek

I am grateful for where I came from and where I have been; each place I have lived, loved and explored and the beloved friends I have met along the way. However, there are times when this lifestyle is conflicting. The following quote sums it up well, "My confession is I fall in love with so many places I'm always half-broken hearted by goodbyes. And I don't believe in non-attachment. There's no passion inside of that. I believe in burning, and longing. And I believe we leave tiny pieces of ourselves in every place we've loved (Victoria Erickson)." The duality of emotions, half-broken hearted and content, can be difficult. My soul at times can ache for people and places yet also feel an immense gratefulness for where I am in the present moment.

It's almost been a year since I've been back to Alaska. I don't know if I'll ever live there again even though my permanent physical address remains there. And sadly at some point my parents will move on from our childhood home. Regardless of the changes that may one day come, my roots are there and I believe that the wild of Alaska gave me my wings.