I miss my home.
I crave the smell of the southwestern shale under 80 degree sun or after heavy rainfall. I miss the smell of my garage in the summer, the climbing rope rugs that have soaked up years of Colorado weather and smells.
Hearing certain songs or artists also tends to sweep me right back to these moments. It’s pretty amazing what memories music can hold. A song that intrinsically represents my childhood is Joni Mitchell’s “Cactus Tree.” There are endless songs that have the power to transport me back to a certain moment, but Joni’s voice in this song makes me feel like a child every time I listen to it.
When she sings to me, I remember the pile of orange peels in my dad’s 2000 Jeep Cherokee. I remember being able to smell how cold the air was driving at 9,000 feet in January, how the inside of my nose would freeze even inside the car. I remember the odor of the asbestos brakes when we got stuck behind a semi on those same mountain roads. These memories have always existed, but it’s in adulthood I’ve connected so strongly to them, realized why they’re so important to me.
Accepting the past, embracing the present and future
This is the first summer of my life I won’t be spending almost entirely at home. And I’m thankful for my current setting, but realizing ‘home’ means something different in adulthood has been a bit of a bittersweet process.
Southwest Colorado, specifically the one my parents curated for me, is such a fundamental piece of my being, and it’s got me thinking about how integral place making is in the shaping of the self, how music and my own sensory relationship to the world around me has shaped my version of adulthood.
I always knew I was lucky to grow up in the mountains that I did, even luckier to have parents who wanted to show me every nook and cranny of our home – the desert canyon crags and high country meadows alike. Engaging in dialogue about what ‘home’ means with my community has made me even more nostalgic for my own past. Something inside me wants to learn about what this means for others, too. I love listening to and reading stories of how a place can impact and shape the individual self, whether that be where all or part of childhood was spent, where a core memory was made. I love immersing myself in someone else’s story as they illuminate their own childhood smells, songs bursting with nostalgia for a lost time, and sharing those moments that are so fleeting but so special.
Sensory Expression and Relating to our Surroundings
The settings where we as humans spend our early formative years and the senses that define those places are fundamental to a person’s sense of self and absolutely has something to do with how they interpret the world around them.
Those memories can come back in countless ways – for me, they tend to show up when I’m outside – the smell of plastic frisbees in the sweltering desert heat, sweaty bike shorts, paddleboards, tennis balls, my brother’s soccer ball, dried mud on dad’s bike shoes and the compost bin overflowing with watermelon rind ready to be moved to mom’s tomato garden.
Returning to those spaces through scent as a different version of yourself can be powerful. For me, it’s nauseating, knowing the younger me connected with a certain melody, breathed that same air, touched the same tree. I can’t see her or touch her but I know she’s there with me. And she hasn’t existed everywhere like she has here, so to feel her presence next to and within mine all these years later feels highly spiritual and almost fateful.
It’s truly magical how these spaces become a part of us, how they resonated with and defined our inner children and the memories that shape us. Reconnecting with another version of yourself through travel, and just life, can be a powerful and cathartic examination of self, if you’re willing to do the work.
Speculating about the future is easy and can be important in reflection of the self and larger social consequences. But it’s also important, and can be even more fulfilling, to live in the present and tell stories of the past. Listen to others’ experiences with an open-mind, to greet different versions of ourselves and our peers, even if we don’t necessarily resonate with them.
Get Busy Being Free
Our collective identity, knowledge and experience is a huge advantage – and we’d better value it and teach it to our own if we want to pass on the idea that everybody deserves to experience their life freely and safely, within and beyond their immediate social space. So talk, listen, play, learn, work, laugh and cry together.
You can’t become yourself alone. Whether you like it or not, your peers, the mere presence of other humans affects how you relate to your own identity. So does the natural ecosystem around you – you and your senses are part of your past, present and future communities.
I’m telling myself to take an intentional step back more often. To consider movement through the universe and the larger world. Accept it and move forward. Visit old versions of you, loved ones, and in the words of Joni, get “busy being free.”
In the last few years I’ve drifted a bit from this openness, acceptance, and relinquishment of judgement or prescribed predilections. I can open the door to this version of myself, though highly spiritual (and somewhat intimidating). I’m ready to find her again. She lives in me, and so do those memories. It’s just a matter of searching for them.
‘Home’ means something different now than it used to, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Old and new memories shape the way we walk through life. To me, the concept of being an adult seemed like a deep dark abyss. And in some ways, it is. But there are meadows, tunnels, mountains, caves and rivers to be found. There are new memories to make, new places to call home. Invite a different version of yourself to sit with you, and savor what you can.
