Home

"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest." - W. Somerset Maugham

This may be my favorite quote of all time. I first found it in an edition of Glimmer Train - a literary mag I was able to afford for about a year. The quote now rests above a picture on my desk; a picture of a best friend and me in the Grand Canyon. Two broad-shouldered, deep-chested men with bird legs and astigmatisms standing beside the frigid water that runs through the bowels of the Grand. Two spectacled, unshaven guys with hands cocked on their hips, as if declaring to any who would listen, "We are here. Let the record show that we are here." Browned from the sun, we look young. And at rest. After hiking down from the north rim a descent worthy of something Dante might have envisioned, we appear to be at rest. How can this be? Was there some deep-rooted atavism that urged us to the Grand Canyon that blessed October? Why was this a place to which we felt we mysteriously belonged? These were scenes never seen before, a landscape we had never known; yet, they were as familiar to us as if we'd been here all along. Maybe this was home and we were at last, at rest. I do know that my friend and I often feel like aliens with a sense of strangeness that flows in our veins, aloof to the snapshots we usually pose for. I had the same experience, however, when the same friend and I climbed the last few golden stairs of Pikes Peak. We walked into the snack bar/gift shop on top of that mountain with salt crystals in our eyebrows, more dehydrated than we cared to admit, trying to stay erect on our birdlegs and yet we were at rest. I do feel that there are places that are more "home" than others, places we visit along the way and are refreshed. I also feel that there are people that are "home" for us, people that are closer than blood relatives. These are people that we mysteriously feel we belong to, like maybe we were brothers or sisters or something and a crazy chain of events took place at our birth and we were separated and farmed out to different families - born out of due place. And we spend our whole lives searching for that lost sibling who has the other half of the silver pendant we wear around our necks. And when we finally find them and spend time in their presence, we're home, at rest. Regardless of the descent or ascent we've just made, being with them brings rest, peace, wholeness, harmony, home. Maybe these people are our witnesses - they are they ones who stand by us and declare, "We are here. Let the record show that we are here." And maybe it is only those who can witness to the person we really are that can offer something along the lines of "home." The perennial question: Who are your people? Your great cloud of witnesses? I don't think the word "great" refers to numbers here, but to gifts of perception.