Home Though

In my second year as a teacher 30 years ago, I taught a class that I still need to learn from. A group of kids in the Aleutians and I developed a youth-edited weekly publication that kids in the K-12 school clambered to read every Friday. It was a quirky little juried collection of non-fiction narratives, edited with an emphasis on brevity. (I know, how did Mr. McLongwinded ever pull that off? Luckily, most kids are surprised when a teacher asks them to just be honest instead of adding fluff.)

Josh, a beyond-quiet, quiet kid wrote this piece for our second issue.

Today, as I get my bearings back home after a couple of weeks away, I’m thinking of the word “though” in his final line, “It was home, though.” It’s amazing and kind of cool how we put up with all kinds of dissonance and quirks and things we don’t get or like when our minds and hearts find home.

If there’s any one theme in this blog, I suppose it’s a dog teaching her human how to find home.

What’s changed in my absence? Not much and a whole lot. The “unfolding” is still going on in the woods. (We both snacked on the big tree trail this morning; I on some fiddleheads and Cedar on some Twisted Stalk (watermelon berry) leaves. The skunk cabbage is starting to show its Brobdingnagian genes. The varied thrush have apparently purchased all of the available frequencies for forest radio. And the blueberry and salmonberries are pantomiming their “Nothing Gold Can Stay” routines.

The big shift I got to chuckle about this morning is that Cedar is now the experienced one on the trail. She knows more about May’s greening in this particular center of the universe than I do. I hadn’t even seen the Twisted Stalk until she began her leaf chewing this morning.

Cruise ships are here. Katrina is 900 miles away. People on Juneau Community Collective, the meanest place on the internet, are arguing that “Collective” in the name should be changed because it’s “too communist,” the maritime ghetto (as Katrina calls my side yard) is calling for attention, the rains will be back soon, chinook populations are endangered, the glacier is receding, and I can’t get ahold of the vet about you know who’s spay appointment on Monday morning.

It is home though. And it’s nice to be here again.