The other morning I woke to a strange and marvelous sight: outside the whole world was brittle and grey. The trees had frozen in the night. They stood like ghosts, outstretched arms spackled with frost. The effect was transfixing: a single muted pewter painted across the hills above our house, a frigid hush hanging over everything.
Steve had his back turned to the window, making coffee. “Look!” I cried, pointing outside.“Bony ice skeletons!”
Steve, rarely one to indulge hyperbole, nodded. “Frosty trees.”
The sun was rising through the piñons, and all at once the needles turned iridescent, glistening as though they’d been electrocuted and were standing on end from a great shock. I raced outside in my bare feet to take a picture. Already the bony ice skeletons were melting, becoming trees again. The ordinary world, home as we know it, restored.
This has not been the case for so many this past week. The horrific LA fires painted the town red, then ashen; homes were incinerated, neighborhoods irrevocably changed. In the wake of such devastation, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of home, trying to understand the scope of loss so vast it’s almost inconceivable.
Home is a house, a dwelling, a physical structure. It holds our basic needs—our socks and toothbrushes—and our keepsakes. Our dead dad’s wool sweater, handwritten letters from your grandmother. It’s the kitchen table where we gather for breakfast: the babies in high chairs and then boosters, faces hiding behind cereal boxes; one day big enough to stretch their arms the whole length of the table; too soon a teenager racing out the door, bye! Home is the dogs and children, fish, husbands, parents—all the loved ones we share it with.
Banter and jokes so bad they’re good is home.
Memories of the past and hope for the future is home.
Last Saturday my neighbor emailed: her home town of Altadena had been flattened. “My childhood, all of it is gone.” Her elementary school, the church where she was married—torched. I called her right away. Hearing the shock in her voice brought it home for me.
Home is more than just four walls. Neighbors down the driveway who bring you smoked salmon from Alaska; V-man’s rusted old blue Ford Bronco that rumbles on winter mornings, warming its engine. It’s the rural one-room post office beside the railroad tracks where we renew our passports. It’s the trails through the hills we run in every season, the paths we follow along fences, the sidewalks we walk to town. I keep thinking about the trails I ran in the Hollywood Hills when I was there in November recording the audio book of Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal Word. They climbed straight up above the sprawl. I loved that so much wildness was so accessible to the city. I thought whoever lived there and made a relationship with those trails was lucky to call them them home.
Like many this week, we’ve been talking about fire risk. What we know now is this: The fires in L.A. could happen anywhere. It just as easily could have been Santa Fe. We talk about defensible perimeters, underground power lines, and what to pack in our Go bags. Get the dogs and girls, each other. Passports and documents safe in a safe. And then what? What else would I run for? My notebooks, decades of writing. My father’s. Letters from my mother: Katie Dear,… The book where I write the girls’ milestones and little sayings I never want to forget. (“11/17/18 Maisy, pointing the bare trees swaying in the breeze: ‘The trees are singing.’”) Beyond that, nothing material really matters.
The world feels full of precarity this week. Fires, transitions, transitions, fires. So we hold onto home, whatever form it takes. Nothing fancy. Memories, histories, treasures, morning light coming in through the east windows, faded red leather chair where babies nursed, a fire in the woodstove before anyone else is awake. The friends we keep, who keep us.
Before Christmas, I made a holiday card with photos of our dearest friends in Santa Fe. This handful of families are our extended family, who go with us on river trips and backcountry trips, who’ve helped us raise our raggedy, feral children into almost-grown teenagers, who will take their calls at 2 am, no questions asked. For whom we’ll do the same. They are the safety net stretched out beneath us. They make Santa Fe feel like home.
I never got around to sending the card. Until now.
Home isn’t just one place, of course. It’s everywhere and anywhere we can truly be ourselves and allow others to do the same. They say it takes a village. To that I’d add entire cities, the whole world, together.
May we all find strength in home.
xo katie
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES TO PRACTICE WITH ME!
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Your writing is so beautiful and always touches my heart. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I read a post from someone I follow on Instagram and she wrote that home is inside of her. This thought is very comforting. How lucky we are to live in such beautiful places. ✨💛