FINDING MY WAY HOME

By Danielle Scruton Boonstra

Evergreens whooshed by her as she drove. Peppered between them were trees shedding leaves of burnt red and orange. Her 1991 Acura Integra was packed to the gills. The air was just cool enough to crack the window open.

September.

No one was surprised by her leaving. The hugs at her old office were tight and true with whispers of, “You stayed too long” and “Go. Make us proud.” She had spent five years doing what she thought was right. Five years at a desk. Five years trying to be good, to meet a good man, to make a life worth settling down for.

Five years.

But she was wild at heart, and not in a false rebellion kind of way. She wanted roots, but she also needed wings. Family would come—she felt it in her bones. She would love and love big. But for now…for now she craved a landscape that matched her soul: untamed, pure and full of awe. For now the love was for herself and nature and art and God.

North country.

It was amazing how much money you could save when a place was calling your name. She heard it at night, just as her head hit the pillow. It was an echo from the distance and the pull was both sonic and visual; a rope running through fingers, pulling her closer and closer. A call so deep and bare she could think of little else. Her lunches were spent scoping lakeside cabins and small cottages in the hills.

No neighbors.

She was thirty years old but had never been alone. Between parents and boyfriends and roommates, she had shared her existence, her habits and her energy constantly. She was tired. It was time to feed herself, to dangle between chores and obligations and be still for a while. It was time to pray and paint and run with animals she had never seen.

No plan.

It would take as long as it took. Her soul was writing the script and she was not privy to the following pages. She lived by breath, by gut. A friend had called her fearless, but that wasn’t entirely true. She shook with nerves at times but gently let them pass. Would her broken heart follow her? Of course it would, but she would no longer follow it. No more longing for completion. She had read a poem once that said she was already whole and that felt true. She would follow that.

Arrival.

Pulling down the gravel road, she gasped. The small cedar cabin sat to the side, bowing deep to the grass-covered hills and the shimmering lake before it. A laptop screen could never, ever do this justice. Is home a place or a feeling? Looking out at the scene before her, she had to say it was both. It was an answer to a call, a relenting, a surrender to that voice that whispers low and sweet: “I’ve got you.” Tall grass at her feet, water close at hand and heaven within her.