Off the Grid: Home is where you build it
While my husband has been struggling his way through things like “back fill” and “footings” and the boorish beginnings of a house, I have been supporting him by sending pictures of Acadia National Park. If this alone is not enough to lift his spirits, I offer motivation by saying things like, “I can’t wait until you have time to adventure with me!”
It is not that I lack a certain fascination about footings and the stuffs of plumbing and electricity, it’s that I can offer nothing of value to the process other than ask just enough questions to distract the workers. It turns out, building a house is far less romantic at this stage than I had imagined. I haven’t yet claimed this space and I haven’t finished grieving the one I left.
Leaving any home is as mournful as building a new one is promising. In the waiting period, I seem to be escaping to other people’s territories (and national parks) for reprieve and distraction. This strange rental purgatory has me aching for a place that is ours and pondering the importance of territory.
It would seem that researchers agree humans are territorial for a variety of reasons benefiting social structure and identity, manifesting in small forms, such as a specific place at the dinner table, or in a much broader scope. I’ve even seen a fair few territorial bumper stickers warning off everything from tourists to Californians.
Some argue that it is a biological imperative that we have and create territory, and considering how lost I feel without a garden to kill or some varmint to eradicate, I have to agree. There is a kind of free-floating un-belonging that permeates me, a lack of purpose.
Outside of Acadia, I camped at the off-grid homestead of a couple broaching their seventies. The husband showed me the trail he built around the perimeter, told me the story of the pond his father dug in 1972, and sent me to the garden to pull carrots. Every corner of his property had been cultivated in one way or another with love and pride.
Every board used in building cabins, outhouses, chicken coops and bridges had been milled by them. The squash patch was an expanse of yard bearing brilliant yellow flowers bigger than my head. Here was a patch of blueberries, there was a patch of mint. The greenhouse positively swelled with tomato plants. The pair glowed with the vitality of purpose and industriousness (and gardening success, I imagine).
Each day, he would walk the property and feed ducks, check on the wildlife, and tinker on various projects that satisfied needs of body, mind, and soul. The relationship between him and the land was symbiotic in ways we forget in our urban environments. It was a reminder of a kind of hum inside of me when I have something to steward, whether it is a pot of basil or a plot of tansy.
The scientists say that our territorial nature increases with the amount of time we spend in a space, but I suspect it also has much to do with the memories we make and the love we pour into it. Right now, we’re just pouring concrete.
I can hardly wait to add my bent-nail personal touch and a few poorly cut boards to make the place really feel like ours.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com.