Landscapes of Home - Seamus Heaney

There are many definitions for where home is. Typically people say it’s where you were born, or where you lived for more than a month, or where people have to take you in when you need help. For me, home is where I have a feel for the land. Seamus Heaney speaks of the importance of connecting to the land when we are young, otherwise we find it hard to do.

I grew up in the woods and on the lakes of Wisconsin, canoed in the Boundary Waters above Minnesota, sleeping on tiny islands, and lived in Edmonton, Alberta where summer lasted two weeks, but the winter snows were wonderfully deep and the aurora borealis spectacular. I also lived in the Bay Area and hiked on Mt. Tamalpais along the ocean, and now I help out on a farm in central Illinois. Each one is a place that I call home.