This is where I am from. How beautiful is this?
I was looking around online, and it always amazes me when I can find something on the world wide web that originates in little Newport Virginia (that is NOT Newport News, thankyouverymuch), because the whole area seems to be straight out of the 1800's.
I found this website: Windrush Farm. This is literally less than a mile from where I grew up. I was raised in the house that my father built for me to grow up in, built right next door to his sister and the place where he grew up.
To say that I did not appreciate the beauty of this area during my childhood would be such an understatement. I was right there living next to that mountain, listening to Adam and the Ants and the Dead Kennedys and reading Anne Rice and dreaming of living in a real place, a place with public transportation and tall buildings and culture.
I suppose most teenagers are fairly stupid.
Now with the perspective of decades of distance I look at photos of the wondrous beauty of the Appalachian mountains and it just makes me ache with homesickness. I like where I am now and I really don't want to move back, but it feels like a sizable chunk of my heart is there, and always will be.
I know what you mean. I feel the same way about my home fields and beaches. I was home close to Easter and the wild lillies were blooming in the highway ditches, less than a few miles from the low-energy coastline of yellow sand and crazy rocks and sharp-leaved salt water grasses.
ReplyDeleteI think we have something in us, like salon, that makes us want our birth homes...
wooz
I think so too, Wooz. :)
ReplyDeleteI am testing allowing all comments without moderation, since it seems like Blogger is having a lot of comment weirdness lately.
ReplyDeletedear ellen, home will always be inside us, the place that made us who we are. i think when we ache for home, we're aching for a connection to who we used to be, when life seemed simpler. i think that's how it is for me, anyway. your original home is truly beautiful. and it will always be yours. love to you.
ReplyDeletei've been playing with the idea of getting rid of comment moderation, too, except i worry that i will miss some comments.
ReplyDelete"A connection to who we used to be", how interesting. That's true. And now it's where my father is buried, which also gives it an emotional meaning. I wish I could go back sometime soon and visit his grave.
ReplyDeleteAngella, I got rid of comment moderation, but I set it up to send me an email whenever anyone leaves a comment. It's at Settings -> Comments -> Comment Notification Email (at the bottom of the page). It even let me set it up to notify an email address that is not connected to my Blogger account. The email contains both the comment and a link to the blog post that was commented on. So far this seems to be working well for me. :)
Thanks! I think I'll try it!
ReplyDelete