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PrintA Suitable Den
Families in the wild move from place to place with aplomb, it seems. Are we humans that different? Is home a place or a state of mind along the way?
ILLUSTRATION BY Aude-Noelle Nevius
The sight of her gray form startled me.
We’d been watching a distant pair of wolves feeding on a kill near the river, joining a motley group of wildlife enthusiasts toting high-powered scopes and cameras. But with a restless four-year-old in tow, we had given up on getting a closer look, and pulled onto the road.
The tightness of her full belly slowed the wolf’s steps, as she crossed in front of our van and picked her way diagonally up a short slope. “Can you see her?” I called to our daughter in her car seat. “That’s a mother wolf headed home to her den.”
For fifteen years now, the same number of years we’ve owned our Jackson home, my husband Dave and I have made the short trip to Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. The journey reconnects us to the dramatic play of landscape and animals, the range of our larger home in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, each other, and even ourselves. So, when we arrive back at our own driveway and I catch sight of the “For Sale” sign, I feel startled once again.
Our house has been on the market for months, and I’m still as changeable as the weather about it. One minute, I’m calm and certain that it’s just a material object, something to let go of, with ease and grace. The next minute I’m strangely offended when a potential buyer suggests that our place needs “fixing up.”
Sure, we would have loved new hardwood floors, but don’t they notice the natural light and realize it makes the living room cheerful, even in January? Or the overfull bookcase that adds interest to the hallway? And the lived-in, loved-in coziness of our loft?
Before we were married, my husband and I committed to our house. Finding the down payment wasn’t easy, but we did it, and a few years later, a white tent in the backyard shaded our wedding reception.
Back then, our house had only one bedroom, which we rented to a friend, while we slept in the loft. Even though he woke us daily, with a coffee grinder before six a.m., I remember giving thanks each night for our “own place” as we fell asleep in the upstairs nook. I planted a garden, and we built a deck to host friends and barbeque parties. Years later, not long after the birth of our daughter, we landed back in the loft, only this time the wake-up calls were even earlier.
No matter the room, wherever I look, a tender memory waits.
Why is it then that I feel more at home on our Yellowstone trip, when we sleep almost on top of each other in a small van and live mostly outdoors?
While I’m in the Lamar, I completely forget about my house. I carry my home inside myself, creating shared space by connecting in awe with my daughter, feeling our family’s combined excitement when we spot an animal, or joining together around the campfire under the stars.
This trip is one of our family rituals, a journey with intention.
Honoring the trip as a journey helps me recognize how everyday rituals, like my subtle reliance on a warm greeting at Pearl Street Bagels, create my true home. How seeding my vegetable garden, just before the fireworks party at our house, sets me in my own relaxed rhythm. How chatting with growers at the farmers’ markets cultivates my bond to local food. Or how picking audacious blooms from the first sunflower stalks reminds me to get ready for my daughter’s birthday.
Maybe the process of selling, leaving, and ultimately embracing a new home, hopefully here in the same town, is a type of journey, too.
I wonder if I can approach the transition with as much focused attention as when I wait for a grizzly to come over a distant hill? Whether I can find the same ease in letting go that the wolves show when they need to move to a more suitable den.
Whether we stay in our house or not, I’m learning that it’s my experience of the nearly daily connections and rhythms that make me feel most at home. Paradoxically, they allow each day to become more of an expedition into the field, waiting for the miraculous to appear.
Just as I wait for the wolves to reveal themselves each year.
