Thursday, August 30, 2018

Homecoming

This essay resonated with me this morning, as the search for a new home is uppermost in my mind these days. (We were approved for a mortgage loan yesterday, and now we're ready to begin making offers on houses!) Traveling is great, but a real home to come back to is even better.

I hope you enjoy yet another essay by Hal Borland. 

August 30th and 31st
Homecoming

"More than half the pleasure of going is in the return, as any traveler knows. To go, to see the far place, the place beyond the horizon, is exciting; but to return is satisfying as few other things can ever be. To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home.
Few of us are that kind of traveler who can be at home forever away from home. The new, the strange and the different have their lure, but one needs a place to call his own. One needs to belong somewhere, to feel the roots, however tenuous, of identity with place. Home, we call it, whether it be a room or a house or an apartment, a farm or a plot of grass or a well-known street or park. Home, where one can feel and touch and see and find comfort in familiar things. The place where one belongs, find comfort in familiar things. The place where one belongs.
Man, being man and an ambulatory creature with a degree of restlessness in his blood, must be up and gone from time to time. He must go, if only to assure himself that the horizon has no boundary. He must move from here to yonder, if only to know that he is neither slave nor prisoner. What are hills for, if not to have a farther side? And what is the purpose of that distant rim of sky if not to lure a man beyond his own small orbit? But once one has gone, one must come back.
And that is the final satisfaction of a trip, whether it is a vacation or just a journey - the return itself. The homecoming. The trip back, and the home at the end. To go is good, but to come back is best."

Hal Borland
"Sundial of the Seasons"
August 1955

16 comments:

  1. I do tend to feel that way now, living in Spain and not having a job. But when I was working (and often unhappily), I would dread "coming back." I was always a wanderer and in those days I wanted to continue wandering.

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  2. How true. He is one of my favorite writer's.

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  3. I so agree with this, every time I leave the house I just want to go back.

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  4. I have GOT to look this guy up!

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  5. Of all the roads both east and west, the one that leads to home is bst.

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  6. The best part of vacation is coming home again (as Joanne said much more poetically above). I always think of George Carlin saying "Home is where you keep your stuff."

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  7. I know when we travel my favourite part of the journey is coming into my city then into my neighbourhood. I start getting to where I just want to skip over all of it and just be back in my home, saying hello to Norbert, and throwing the dirty laundry from the luggage in the machine.

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  8. How exciting, hope you find the perfect home. Make a list of what you want in your perfect house, it will help in your search.

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  9. That's lovely. I adore my comfy home.

    Love,
    Janie

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  10. Good news. Keep your mind open about what type of house you want... you might surprise yourself, and save a lot of money in the process. Happy hunting.

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  11. Great to know your house buying plans can now take shape properly!
    Yes, coming home is wonderful. I feel like that about three different places: 1. my own flat, which felt like my home the moment we moved in 15 years ago. 2. "Our" cottage in Ripon, especially my room upstairs. 3. OK's cottage in the village where I spend so many weekends now.

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  12. The third paragraph gave me a kind of chill because Mr Borland articulated something that is very much a part of me. Thanks for sharing this Jennifer and good luck with the house search!

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  13. I have lived in five states, owned five homes, plus rentals along the way. I love to travel, but always look forward to returning home. I work in aging, my number one item of advice for people thinking about retirement is own your home.

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  14. What are hills for, if not to have a farther side?
    The farther side of hills has always attracted me.
    And home? I have had a number of places I've called home over the years, a place to return to after being away on the farther side of the hill. However if I had to leave tomorrow for some other place I wouldn't be too upset. And what of those people in the world, whilst diminished now in numbers, who lead a nomadic life and those millions of refugees in the world who no longer have a home?
    Alphie

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