And then I was home.
☆ February 23, 2016
I drove just shy of 700 miles this weekend. A family visit corresponded perfectly with a follow up with my voice doc. Both out of state, one big loop. Both great. I drove home yesterday.
As I got closer to the Wyoming state line, the wind mellowed. Traffic dispersed. And then I was in Wyoming. The landscape seemed to take a deep breath, relax, and just spread out. Houses and power lines vanished from sight. I passed magpies and an eagle feasting on roadkill. I passed a truck and horse trailer parked out in the sagebrush, two cowboys on horseback riding away into the vastness.
As I got closer to home, the earth changed from silver and tan to red. When I stopped on the road to open the gate to my driveway, I could feel the silence. Six mule deer picked their way across the pasture. A whinny from Kota broke through the quiet, and I looked up and saw a dozen faces watching me from the point of the hill above – Daisy and Maia and Li’l Six and Ranger and the rest.
And then I was home.
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32 Responses to “And then I was home.”
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February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:13 am
You are a poet. Love it.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:14 am
Who needs sparkly red pumps to go back home! Greatest feeling in the world is to return to that place you call home.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:15 am
That sweet sweet scent of home..that warm feeling of belonging no where else..the open arms and eyes of our animals .lour family..nothing equal that feeling of arriving..I know it we’ll SHREVE !
Marlene from cambria
February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:16 am
And welcome back. Well described.
When I visit my family’s ranch, I also find myself aware- as I’m not while in suburbia- of silence as a physical thing, not simply an absence. It becomes something I soak up, drink, breathe deeply into me.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:20 am
i returned home late last night. just feels good. thankful that you are safe.
love to you.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:39 am
Exquisite descriptions.
Consise and effective.
I can feel the space and the silence.
-d-
February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:40 am
Home always feels good…
February 23rd, 2016 @ 11:08 am
I cannot imagine nor ever want to know the feeling of not having a home.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 11:10 am
PS…….Have you read the new book on Lizabeth Salandar? It’s not done by the same author as he passed but it was nice to have an update on her character.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 11:19 am
and those dozen faces were waiting for your arrival so that they could feel at home too. you are just as much a part of what makes it home as the red earth and the silence.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 11:32 am
This was beautiful to read. Thank you!
February 23rd, 2016 @ 11:37 am
This was like I could have been there too, just arriveing home, I could almost smell it, thanks for your response to coming home, also glad you had a safe, and happy trip! Nancy.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 12:43 pm
Isn’t it wonderful how evocative a landscape can be of that feeling of home? And the sights mix with the smells and all the senses take over. I am living in Oakland now but am from Southern California. I drive home every few months to check on my parents … and there is a spot just as I come out of the mountains onto the coast north of Santa Barbara, and it is suddenly my landscape, my home, where my body and soul feel “at home.” I love Oakland, and it is the place where my found family congregates, but SoCal is my primal home. My shoulders relax and traffic be damned, you can’t break me!
February 23rd, 2016 @ 12:45 pm
Kota the Town Cryer.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 12:50 pm
Home is where the heart is.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 12:52 pm
Do the Farmily come to greet you?
I’m sure they notice you’ve been gone. Do they show any joy that you have returned to them?
You have taken Wyoming to your heart and made a choice for it to be your home. But you didn’t grow up there. Can you review with readers where you did grow up and what it is that decided you to make Wyoming your home?
February 23rd, 2016 @ 1:02 pm
I hope you are enjoying the process of making daily posts. I am really enjoying reading them. Thank you for sharing these with us.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 1:13 pm
Yes, beautiful to read. Thank you very much, Shreve.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 4:11 pm
Beautiful.it felt like I was there with you, thank you
February 23rd, 2016 @ 7:57 pm
nice to go away, but nicer to come home ;)
February 23rd, 2016 @ 8:21 pm
sigh…what a wonderful drive home…thanks for taking us along.
February 23rd, 2016 @ 9:31 pm
Settle into the silence…
February 23rd, 2016 @ 9:34 pm
I, like Lori above, am so happy to be reading your daily post. Your words remind me of the song, I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS…IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS…Except, you get to go home and we got to ride ‘shotgun.’ Thanks you.
February 24th, 2016 @ 12:20 am
” there’s nothing like home. There’s nothing like home.”
Dorothy was right, and you described it so beautifully.
February 24th, 2016 @ 12:55 am
LOvely!!!
February 24th, 2016 @ 2:46 am
What an awesome post. Brought back so many times of seeing home and being so glad to be back there. You have such a wonderful way with words.
Thank you for sharing.
February 24th, 2016 @ 7:22 am
Nice! there’s no place like home!
XO
February 24th, 2016 @ 6:14 pm
I agree with everyone. There’s no place like home.
February 25th, 2016 @ 8:33 pm
My mind & heart had a party picturing those dozen faces.
“Both great” – hallelujah. xo
February 28th, 2016 @ 11:38 am
I treasure silence and there is none in my life. In the city the sound of the distant traffic NEVER stops. On the day of the blackout as I walked ten miles home I began to be aware of the fading sounds. No traffic lights means no vehicle movement. The Westside Highway slowed then stopped. This was getting exciting. I imagined a completely silent city, a seemingly impossible and heavenly idea and it was actually happening. Then, alas, they cranked up a generator to provide coolness to a community room for those in danger of the heat.
In the country there’s the lovely sound of the stream that completes the idyllic scene. It goes on and on and on and ON AND ON.
There is a place a little way up the mountain where all the sounds finally disappear except for the stray aircraft. I need to go there more often.
In the meantime I need to find the silence inside my head. Any ideas how to do this, Farmily Friends, would be gratefully accepted.
P.S. I really don’t want the city to ever be completely silent. That would mean disaster.
February 28th, 2016 @ 11:46 am
P.P.S. Sometimes I get close, Shreve, by reading your accounts of moments like “And then I was home.”
February 28th, 2016 @ 2:52 pm
Wish I was in the West!! Thanks for the writing!