Home

 

After sixteen days of travel, I thought my dogs and I would be happy–relieved–to be home. But as I unloaded the Subaru, filling the washing machine, packing away camping gear, hanging rain-soaked tarps and my tent awning to dry (in the garage; it’s raining here), I felt more glum than glad. Maybe Dashiell felt the same. After a quick tour of the house and yard, he jumped back into the car and refused to get out. For him (and me?) these tight quarters had become home.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my house in Bend, and I appreciate the comforts and conveniences I am so privileged to have here. Indoor plumbing? Heck yeah. But if there’s one thing the freedom of retirement has shown me so far, it’s that “home” is not just a particular physical space; it’s also an ideological anchor. The Trump-loving citizens of Lakeview, Oregon, where I stopped at a Safeway long enough to hear a young, unmasked worker urge an elderly masked shopper to avoid the dangerous Covid vaccine lest it ruin his DNA, are at home among their like-minded neighbors (many of whom displayed American flags and “Trump 2024” banners alongside “Fuck Biden” signs). Again, people live here; they are at home, not only in this isolated geographical space, but in the head space that might as well have been Evil Narnia to me.

One of the things I have valued about my stays in National Parks and other internet-free spaces is the way “home” is redefined. The basic rules governing campgrounds, which most of my fellow campers followed, focused on the politics of safety, courtesy, and respect: we protected ourselves and each other from bears by using the lockers at each site to store all food-related gear; we curtailed loud socializing and turned off generators by 10 pm; we made sure our campfires were put out and our spaces meticulously cleaned. And, thank goD, we avoided all partisan displays or exchanges. Along with the absolutely awe-inspiring beauty of the places I stayed, this experience was both cognitively and viscerally cleansing. It made me feel different, more settled, at home in The Peace of Wild Things.

Yosemite is magnificent. Once home to indigenous people who called themselves Ahwahneechee–dwellers of the Ah-wah-nee, or Big Mouth Valley–Yosemite was taken over by European-Americans (‘Merica!) who named the area after the tribe they annihilated (“Yosemite” derives from the Miwok word for the Ahwahneechee people, yohhe’meti: “they are killers”). The California gold rush brought over 90,000 prospectors to this valley, among whom, luckily, was a Canadian, Galen Clark, who recognized that the true value of the region was not in the metal that might be extracted from it, but in the granite cliffs that towered over giant Sequoias, oaks, and chapparal, the waterfalls that plunged from impossible heights into the crystal clear Tuolumne and Merced Rivers, the unique natural beauty at every turn.

He successfully lobbied to protect the Yosemite Valley from development; with Abraham Lincoln’s signature, the Yosemite Grant was established in 1864. John Muir’s efforts later resulted in a larger protected national park, which eventually led to our National Park system.

With more dog-friendly trails than Yellowstone, we spent hours exploring the Yosemite Valley, lunching beside the Merced, walking along paths thick with autumn leaves, and, yes, visiting the pioneer cemetery where people who called this place home (note: white people who called this place home) are “remembered forever” with markers both humble and relatively extravagant.

The storm that pummeled the campcar on our last night in Yosemite turned the dry space where I had parked into a lake, closed the eastern exit road I had planned to take (the higher elevations of the park got their first serious snow), and generally presented opportunities not only for rerouting to our reserved hotel stay in Reno, but for creative midnight bladder relief. Never mind. Eventually, we made it to “The Biggest Little City in the World” (yuck), which put us on track for a new route home: all the way up Hwy 395 to Riley, Oregon, and across Hwy 20 to Bend. The miles and miles of emptiness (interrupted by occasional tiny towns like Lakeview–all of which seemed to lean heavily to the “We Love Trump” end of the spectrum), were beautiful and intoxicating in their own way. No magnificent cliffs or waterfalls, no Sequoia groves (in fact, very few trees at all for most of the day), but vast expanses of rolling land that are home to all kinds of High Desert creatures and plants, some cuckoo Republicans, and, for a while, me.