Rural Roots

On the last day of January, I returned to the small town I grew up in. OK town might be an exaggeration, it's more like a bunch of houses built around a lake. The neighbour to the southwest is my brother, the neighbour to my northeast is a snowdrift that crawls across the road every night. Every morning the plow comes by to drive it back towards the lake it came from but moments later, the snowy fingers pull at the road as the drift drags itself forward again.

I came here because it feels so much like home and, lately, this feeling that I don't "fit in" has become so strong that I could not deny it any longer. It's one of those feelings that I like and hate at the same time. I'm glad that I'm different from other people and I like who I am. Just once though, I would like to sit in a room full of people without feeling like an outsider, an interloper. Truly! Sometimes I feel like an alien. Not the kind that can't get a working visa, but the kind that comes from another world. I know, I know, you make your own experience. The fact that I think this way most likely is the cause of why I feel this way. Yeah, yeah. But what if I'm right? What if I AM different?

So here I am. In a house in a place that isn't quite a town, watching the sun sneak up from behind the trees, feeling like I'm home. Like I belong. It's nice. Here's the creepy part ...it's my parent's house. They're away for the winter. Yup. I ran away from home. Or did I run away to home? Either way you look at it, I ran away. There are other factors of course, most of which are too personal to share on a public blogsite -- even if that blogsite gets less traffic that this not-quite-a-town will ever see in a day. Thing is, I feel like I belong here. It feels like home. It feels still and safe and warm. Right now, I need still and safe and warm.

Every morning since arriving, I wake up at 6 a.m. (though that will change next week when I set my alarm to 5:30 a.m.) , I make a fruit smoothie, brew some coffee and then I watch the sun come up over the trees. I go to my new job at the coffee shop and work with numbers while battling my oh-so-mild dyslexia and then drive back here into the sun. Since commuting through these rural routes, I've seen wolves, deer, a martin, turkeys and clowns (they drive pick ups) oh yeah, and a woodpecker.

I saw the woodpecker last Monday and it made me think of this blog. It was like a sign, of sorts. Well, I'll take it as a sign.

"Welcome home wordpecker."

Thanks woodpecker.