Roots and Branches (or: Home)

In early June I traveled back to Pullman, Washington for the Computers and Writing conference at Washington State University, where I got my MA. As I sat in the Spokane airport with half a dozen other young academics traveling to Pullman, I asked them, "where are you from?" Immediately one of them asked, "what do you mean by 'from'?" and we proceeded to analyze the question. You know. Like academics do. It was amusing, but also kind of serious. We academics tend to be nomads, at least early in our careers. But I realized that for me, that trip felt more like a returning than a coming-from-somewhere.

There are few landscapes more beautiful to my mind than the Palouse in summertime, and as I wandered around the campus and town with new friends and old, I found myself saying, over and over again, "I forgot how much I love this place." I felt at home.

My view of the Palouse, June 2014, taken somewhere between Pullman and Spokane.

I once wrote that I felt unrooted--well-housed but not at home anywhere. My personal circumstances haven't changed much in the intervening year or so. But something in me has changed.

Last week, I flew to Utah, visited my three brothers there, plus three old friends in quick succession. And in the familiar shadow of the Wasatch mountains, I felt at home.

Utah Valley. Not my photo. But still my mountains.

I spent a day at my parents' house in Idaho Falls, and the next day Mom and I drove to Twin Falls for a Sorensen family reunion. And everywhere I went in the Snake River valley, I felt at home.

My brother took this photo of fields near our cousin's house outside of Twin Falls. 

I remember going lots of places for Robinson reunions. It doesn't seem to matter much where we go to be together as long as enough of us can make it. But on the Sorensen side, we always go back to Idaho, to the Snake River Valley. Home country. As a kid, this kind of bored me, but kind of made sense too.

So last week, in between updating genealogy charts and chasing after nieces and nephews and catching up with cousins, I overheard my uncle Mitch, who owns a farm in Lost River, near where my grandfather and great-grandfathers farmed, talk with his siblings about wanting to be cremated and his ashes strewn in the Mackay Reservoir, so that the Sorensens would be part of that valley forever. He was only half-joking. Maybe less than half. I felt that no matter where I go or how much I change, part of me will always belong there too.

Like Tennyson's Ulysses, "I am a part of all that I have met;" and it is a part of me. I'd have to have my ashes spread pretty far to reach all the places I've called home--places I realize I can still call home. My own branch of the family tree is still kind of just a nub. And sometimes it feels quite far from the roots. Sometimes it's hard to feel the roots at all, but they're always there, giving me life and stability. Those roots run deep and spread wide.

Flying in to Phoenix--it took a long time for this place to feel like home. But it does.