What's in a Home?

Riiiing, riiiing, riiiiing

You have reached the voicemail of Haley Brengarter, please leave a message after the tone

BEEEEEEP

Hi Haley, this is the Rocky Mountains calling. We noticed that your departure time from the city has been delayed but we just want to let you know that we will be sitting here waiting for you. Even if you don't make it until next year, we probably will only scoot about 2 - 3 inches - we're never in much of a hurry. Before you leave, we wanted to ask a favor of you. Can you pass a note along to the skyscrapers and please ask them to dial back on their emissions? They're clouding our skies up here. Lone Peak is so sad, he keeps sobbing and it's causing avalanches everywhere. The government is thinking about changing the name of Big Sky to Big Cloud, what a shame. Anyways, don't forget your gloves, it's going to be a cold week, and make sure to respect our elders when you arrive. Some of us are 50 million years old! Safe travels; we are excited to see you soon.

Forget the eye roll and the overexaggerated crossing of my arms. Forget the loud UGH and the ARE YOU KIDDING ME? When our 6:00 am flight from Charlotte to Bozeman, Montana was canceled as we were en route to the airport, a chuckle escaped my lips - I was not surprised. The airport and I have a rocky history; 8 out of 10 encounters I end up sitting on her cold, dank floor, while the gate agent screeches some unhelpful banter in the background, Twizzlers and attitude in hand.

After we bowed our heads to pray to the airplane gods and filled the Delta Airlines branded tithing baskets full of dollars, we found ourselves later that day in the bumpy skies - a turbulent beeline to the snow-capped ridges of our western states.

I was jolted awake by the right side of the plane striking the icy runway before the left. After the ringing of the squeaky breaks subsided and the take-your-breath-away-freezing-cold-fresh-mountain-air filled my lungs, a warm, familiar feeling washed over me. I felt like I was home.

The feeling of home is one that sweeps into my life infrequently but in a ground-shaking sort of way. Home, for me, has been rarely associated with four walls and a roof, but rather a person or a place. The sensation feels something like, if the world was ending - in the fashion of one of those horrible apocalypse movies - this is the person I want to be with or this is the place I want to be in. This feeling that fills my heart and overflows into the rest of my body is one that I have rarely questioned. Why question something that feels so good? So right? But this time, I was perplexed - I had been in Montana for less than 15 minutes and I had no good reason to feel any sensation of home in this new and foreign land. So as I skied and fell in equal quantities on Big Sky's powder-covered slopes, my mind was filled with this notion of home, what it means, and how to recreate it.

The line, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet,” comes from the play Romeo and Juliet in an attempt to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant. Mr. Shakespeare and I happen to agree here especially as it pertains to the naming of a home.

A child's first association with the word home might be the comfort of a mother's arms or a baby crib. With time, the number of associations will grow larger or smaller, previous associations may escort themselves to the garbage can, and others might knock on your door like an eager Jehovah's Witness. If you're anything like me, the definition of a home might broaden beyond the confines of 4 walls to wide open spaces with frosty mountain peaks. Home, to me, will look different than home to you, will look different than every breathing being that walks this planet - what a neat concept. When the definition of home can take on unfathomably vast shapes and sizes, how can we bridge the idea of a house, as a structure with four walls, and a home, with its symbolic meanings?

To initially simplify these thoughts, I will focus on a house - a top-down manufactured object. When I think about what makes this theoretical house a home, four deeply complex topics come to mind:

1. A Sense of Belonging - I feel accepted and supported through the complex social relations around me.

2. Ontological Safety - I feel the stability and continuity necessary to experience myself wholly.

3. Emotional Connection - I feel an alignment and an intimate connection with my environment.

4. Aesthetic Experience - I feel a positive and rewarding appreciation for my surroundings.

From this limited perspective, it is easy for me to piece these topics together, however, when I think about expanding my definition of home outside of a physical building, things get more complicated. I undoubtedly feel at home in nature, but how do I feel stability in an environment with such a broad spectrum of uncontrollable elements? Where there is silence, comfort, and contemplation there is equal challenge, fear, and danger.

I mentioned above that time will reshape our definition of home. The independence that comes with age offers greater choice, but confuse not, choice overload only makes the search for home a more challenging task. A sense of belonging is something most people will struggle to find or struggle to hold with consistency, and even if I am to achieve belonging, emotional connection, and ontological safety, I might still lack an aesthetic experience. What's the big deal with aesthetic experience anyways? Our days which are primarily habitual in nature, cover the aesthetic potential of ordinary objects and routine activities. Some fancy scientists have been able to quantify an increase in the quality of life as one's attitude improves towards the ordinary and the routine, making it really important to feel positively towards the objects that fill your day.

While there are many conclusions I am yet to come to, I have concluded this -

Home gets harder to find as we age - our experiences broaden our perspectives giving us infinitely more options where we can establish roots. Home will take on shapes that morph away from that of a physical house and ask that we dig a little deeper within ourselves. Determining why the mountains feel like home to me has been a process of self-reflection, articulating the wonders of nature, and gaining insights into the relations between nature and home.

So why do I feel at home in nature? My sense of belonging is heightened where I am called to participate in the activities I love and enjoy in communities that support me. Although the environments I love to find myself in are unpredictable, I feel safe and secure in knowing that the laws of nature are relatively consistent - with resourcefulness, I have access to everything I need to problem-solve, learn and grow. In nature, my sensory experiences are intensified, I feel emotions on a grander scale allowing my connections to deepen with my surroundings. The opportunity to express myself wholly is ever so present. Finally, nature provides me with an unparalleled aesthetic experience where the routine and ordinary have no place. My appreciation for my surroundings is bold and lively.

Home has changed a lot for me over the past few years. I think this is an experience everyone will encounter at some point. Recently, however, home has looked a lot like this:

and this:

and this:

“What's in a name? That which we call a home by any other name would sound just as sweet"

Thanks for sticking with me another week. If you have the time to shoot me an email back, I'd love to know what home means to you. Catch you next week!