Back to the Land

I decided to return home to Owl's Knob while sitting on a beach off the Pacific coast of Michoacan, Mexico and talking to a young native woman. She was raising her children in the cottage her great grandfather built, protecting their traditions and culture. Her pride gleamed as she told me that her people took care of their old, stayed close to their roots, and kept the family homestead. While she talked of her home, I thought of my own childhood home and began yearning for it.

At age 22, I bought back the land and house, which had lain in ruins for five years. I now live in the house I grew up in and I am letting the mountain--which raised me--raise my son. The same land that taught my bare baby feet to walk, teaches my baby boy to take his first steps.

I have come full circle, but I am a different person now. Yet some things never change. The frogs and whip-poor-wills still sing each spring, the wind still blows thunderstorms out of the west in late summer, and the owls come hunt the mice, living in the old cabin, every night. This is and always has been a magical place.