Renewal
I took the cover photo late last August on my first journey home in two years.
I hadn't planned to stop at the beach. But a late night catching up with an old friend in Cleveland, and an early start in the morning, meant that I was crossing the western border into Pennsylvania just as Steph started work, and I had some time to kill. After three hours of sleep I could have done with a nap, but in that grittily clear headspace that comes with heavily caffeinated exhaustion, I started thinking about my last trip home, and changed my plans.
The change took me miles past Steph's exit and down into the vineyard-lined valley of my hometown. After a round of familiar errands (the tiny grocery store for huge amounts of cheap spices and a late birthday card for my sister; the tiny post office to overnight the card), I turned up the final two miles of Route 89 to head to the small rocky beach at Freeport.
It was a pilgrimage, of sorts. A humble one. Freeport isn't glamorous. It is small and rough and stony, insulated, isolated, austere...and so damn beautiful it's the first place I think of when I think of home. Growing up, I would walk the two miles there from my parents' house to wander the little shore, stare over the water, think, breathe, gather stones and beach glass. When I lived there again in my early 30s, I reclaimed the habit. On my last trip home, I visited the beach with my mother.
A lot had changed, since my last trip. A lot had changed in me.
Returning to Freeport was a monument. A different kind of coming home. A way of making peace with who I had been, and who I had become.
The dull gray morning blew over the water as I trekked over the rocks to the shoreline. For an hour or so, under the cloud cover that does beautiful things to the daylight, I wandered the little beach, stared over the water, thought, breathed, gathered stones. I took pictures: waves, shore, sky, whimsical rock piles left in lieu of sandcastles (the human impulse for testament), a butterfly resting briefly with a flash of glorious color on the soft blues and grays of the stones. I lost myself, for a while, in the convergence of lake and land and sky. As always, I came away feeling whole and at peace.
It's good to return to that moment, that stillness, that space of light and air, now that it may be a long time before I see anything like it again. It's good to revisit that memory of peace and wholeness, in this time of pandemic and restriction and fear. It's good to remember that at this moment, Freeport remains more or less as it has been for thousands of years, and will continue to be for some thousands of years more. Here in Detroit, I may be sequestered in my apartment in the middle of the country's third-largest and still fast-growing epicenter of COVID-19, but 300 miles away, the unfettered wind blows the waves in rhythmic susurration over the water-worn rocks, and earth and air and water merge endlessly in an infinite expanse of quiet gray, and home is the unbounded space that I carry within me.
I hadn't planned to stop at the beach. But a late night catching up with an old friend in Cleveland, and an early start in the morning, meant that I was crossing the western border into Pennsylvania just as Steph started work, and I had some time to kill. After three hours of sleep I could have done with a nap, but in that grittily clear headspace that comes with heavily caffeinated exhaustion, I started thinking about my last trip home, and changed my plans.
The change took me miles past Steph's exit and down into the vineyard-lined valley of my hometown. After a round of familiar errands (the tiny grocery store for huge amounts of cheap spices and a late birthday card for my sister; the tiny post office to overnight the card), I turned up the final two miles of Route 89 to head to the small rocky beach at Freeport.
It was a pilgrimage, of sorts. A humble one. Freeport isn't glamorous. It is small and rough and stony, insulated, isolated, austere...and so damn beautiful it's the first place I think of when I think of home. Growing up, I would walk the two miles there from my parents' house to wander the little shore, stare over the water, think, breathe, gather stones and beach glass. When I lived there again in my early 30s, I reclaimed the habit. On my last trip home, I visited the beach with my mother.
A lot had changed, since my last trip. A lot had changed in me.
Returning to Freeport was a monument. A different kind of coming home. A way of making peace with who I had been, and who I had become.
The dull gray morning blew over the water as I trekked over the rocks to the shoreline. For an hour or so, under the cloud cover that does beautiful things to the daylight, I wandered the little beach, stared over the water, thought, breathed, gathered stones. I took pictures: waves, shore, sky, whimsical rock piles left in lieu of sandcastles (the human impulse for testament), a butterfly resting briefly with a flash of glorious color on the soft blues and grays of the stones. I lost myself, for a while, in the convergence of lake and land and sky. As always, I came away feeling whole and at peace.
It's good to return to that moment, that stillness, that space of light and air, now that it may be a long time before I see anything like it again. It's good to revisit that memory of peace and wholeness, in this time of pandemic and restriction and fear. It's good to remember that at this moment, Freeport remains more or less as it has been for thousands of years, and will continue to be for some thousands of years more. Here in Detroit, I may be sequestered in my apartment in the middle of the country's third-largest and still fast-growing epicenter of COVID-19, but 300 miles away, the unfettered wind blows the waves in rhythmic susurration over the water-worn rocks, and earth and air and water merge endlessly in an infinite expanse of quiet gray, and home is the unbounded space that I carry within me.
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