Yes, … I am so grateful for where I live …. But it is also much more!
It is so much more than value and stability and security: I love this land, my home. During the 40 odd years that I have lived in and on these acres, with family and now without family, the land has entered my heart, this land! It’s kind of like a marriage: for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; in drought and in flood; blizzard and heat; life and death.
I only know, when I take my winter morning walk-abouts, I feel happy. These are, perhaps, the best minutes of every day (except, maybe, when a strong icy wind is blowing or I am walking on 6 inches of clay on the bottom of my boots. ☺)
I feel present, somehow. I am grateful to be out in the clean fresh air, able to use my body to walk-about; and to be surrounded by such a sense of belonging. Some days when I am still inside, looking out my big windows, it looks forbidding to brave the weather and go out, but I must. The ducks are calling me to let them out of their house or some task is demanding my attention. Then when I do roust out of my chair, swaddle myself in winter gear, and go out to greet the ducks and brave the weather; I find that it is not nearly so severe as it appeared from inside. That’s the way it often is for me: anticipation is seldom reality.
Yes, I know that I love this land! However, I ran across an intriguing question offered by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass:
"I know that I love the land but do I
know that my land loves me?”
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