I was surprised to see that I have never yet used "limbo" as an essay title. Virtually my whole recent life has been a state of limbo, which has a number of interestingly intertwined definitions. Essentially, of course, a state of being where things are unresolved, unsettled, unclear.
There are definitely ways in which returning to the east coast has been grounding. On a very superficial level, there is the fact that by and large, when hearing a place name, I know where the town (or mountain range, or lake) is (which never became the case in Northern Minnesota). One morning this weekend, I opened the deck door to smell my first whiff of an "autumn in New England/northeast" smell. It is an odor that I have never quite encountered anywhere else, and I guess is unique to the types of leaves on the ground, the level of moisture, and the specific air temperature. When I was at Smith, the chapel bells would ring on a beautiful early October day, signifying that it was "Mountain Day", a day off from classes when we were encouraged to get out and take a hike, or at the very least, take a day off from studying. Of course, in those days, only second semester seniors were allowed to have cars, so it was nearly impossible to get up into the mountains, although one year I seem to remember going with friends to climb one of the hills overlooking the Connecticut River. Anyway, that smell, the view of mountains in the distance, and the familiarity of landscape have "hit home", not in a nostalgic way really, just an acknowledgment that these things were my first autumn landscape of this lifetime. I suspect I have always been subtly disappointed with how this time of year manifests elsewhere.
And yes, I've now used real live local McIntosh apples twice to make what my mom called "apple crumble" (basically, the Joy of Cooking "apple crisp" recipe). Apples, brown sugar, flour, butter and cinnamon, with a squeeze of lemon or orange juice. Generally speaking, you cannot find fresh, local McIntosh apples outside the eastern U.S. and Canada.
Yet ten or eleven days into this trip, I haven't got any better clue of where I might find an eastern home base (temporary or permanent). Being out in a more rural area was both more inviting and more disturbing. Visually, not a whole lot has changed "in the countryside" since I was young. But on Sunday afternoon, when the landscape was at its most beautiful, and within a short time of seeing a hawk circling overhead, gunshots started to pierce the peace. This was, like, one shot every ten to twenty seconds for at least two hours! There must have been a shooting range nearby, but how unsettling it was for me cannot be overstated. And even on country roads, cars seem to drive by at exceptionally high speeds these days. It's jarring, nonsensical.
Finding a perfect home shouldn't be my goal -- the extent to which my mind ends up obsessing about that illustrates how easily one can be distracted from one's real goals, in my case, speaking for the Goddess. My home is in Her, so other experiences will flow from that. But I remind myself, she has no trouble speaking for herself (!) The next hurricane is testament to that! It will be so interesting to see when the tipping point will finally come, when people really start to grasp the power of Nature, and to understand the hubris of our traditional assumptions of human permanence, planning, and "power over".
