Certain places are home.
For me, that’s Eugene. Or, rather, the Eugene-Springfield area as a whole.
I haven’t lived there since the mid-eighties, but it’s still home. Portland is also home. I’ve also lived in Oklahoma and France, and they could never be.
Driving down I-5 South from Tigard to Eugene, the thing that tells me I am home is when I start seeing those random hills plunked down in all the fields north of Harrisburg.
It’s not the miles left to travel, it’s the scenery. Hawks on fence posts. Lambs frolicking in the fields in the Spring. Green fields and hills. The mountains in the distance on either side of the freeway.
It’s hard to be sure, but I am pretty sure that anyone would think it is one of the lovelier stretches of scenery anywhere on an interstate. You’d have to have a thing for mountains, valleys, trees and emerald green fields. How could you not?
Then there’s having a room that is your room even if it’s in a house you’ve never lived in. Where people always love you. Even if they don’t necessarily always like you.
It would be easy for me to define why Texas or Oklahoma could never be home to me. The people are friendly and hospitable, but the landscape is foreign to me. That would be both the literal landscape as well as the religious and political landscape. France is beautiful and politically less strange to me than Oklahoma, but the people…well…let’s just say home could never be somewhere where a young woman can pass out on a train and be completely ignored. France cares more about style and food than it does about people. Or at least that is the feeling France evoked in me. I could never be home in a place that feels so emotionally freezing.
Home is where the hippies still flourish. Where you can stop and smell the patchouli. Where everything smells green and, sometimes, very herbal. Where people argue about where to get the best coffee and beer. Where you hate Huskies way more than Beavers. Where we cherish every ray of sun, and wear sandals in the Winter. Where people won’t carry umbrellas even though we know it’s going to rain. Where you still see VW vans. Where we go to the beach even in February. Where people eat fish, crabs and clams they caught themselves. Where people complain that it’s too crowded if there are more than 10 people on the same 2 mile stretch of beach.
When you live in a town with mountains in every direction, and a river or two running through it, you are one of the luckiest people on the planet.
If you’re me, your home is here. In one of the most beautiful places there is.
I might like to travel, but the best part will always be coming home.
