New Places (blog prompt 7)

At first, I looked for Dad. I looked for a scrap of his flannel shirt, for an imprint the size of his shoulders on the forest floor. I searched, scared of finding him, but even more frightened that I wouldn’t. At first, my eyes were drawn to the woods in our backyard like a terrible magnet, yet I couldn’t quite go further than my tulip poplar. I felt him just out of reach, just beyond my fingertips. He haunted my woods, my house, my heart. 

Dad and I on our balcony in the backyard on Easter, 2010

But then I stepped into those woods, and they have lost some of their darkness and fear. I can’t say I gaze at them comfortably and with great joy, though their beauty and little bursts of life lift me even on the worst days.  I look into my own backyard now, and still my chest aches at the thought of him. Something in my rib cage hollows out for a moment. Yet, I am quicker to notice the way the sun falls through the branches and the tilt of the most familiar trees. I look down, beneath my feet, and find tiny flowers of purple and violet and blue and white and yellow so sunny it’s almost orange. I am drawn to the greens sprouting in my flower beds, and the birds hiding among the still-sparse bush in my front lawn. 

Then, I leave my house, and there it is all around me: nature. The kind that flowers and tweets, and whistles. The kind that shimmers and rushes and trickles. The kind that laughs and talks and hopes. It’s difficult to ignore, really. Once I found it at home, I found it at the mall and in the city and along the suburban sidewalks. I found it in the park and in a meadow, along a stream, and in other woods. I found it in me, too, because I thought I wasn’t a nature girl at all until I realized nature isn’t about escaping to a remote place. It’s actually about finding it where you are and acknowledging its “otherness” in your own garden, if you must. 

Now, the trees outside my bedroom window are waving gently in a breeze, and I can’t figure out how I ever overlooked them. But I have a feeling that, although home is a part of me and always will be, there are other things I need to see. There are other places to go. When I leave for Peru next month, I will take a notebook with me so I can record the misty drizzle and the heavy, humid air. I want to capture the sound of a different shore and a different language. I want to take pictures of the strangest, two-toned flowers I have ever seen and the banana trees that casually line some streets. I want to tell a story of the way an entirely new continent can actually be home, too.