Celebrating 4-years on the nomad road, I discover home

Maritime breeze billows through the windows. Gulls hang like white kites over the gray-blue bay. “Welcome home, Annie,” my friend and yoga teacher calls out brightly over the phone, as I cruise across the causeway onto Chincoteague Island. My face softens; a smile spreads. 

This question of what and where is home has been a persistent theme of my solo nomad adventure – increasing in volume and intensity the longer I’ve been ramblin’. In fact, I wrote on this topic back in July of 2023, prompted by my therapist’s concern that I “commit to settle on a place soon.” (https://www.seechangeconsulting.com/post/commit-to-settle-ramblin-anne-contemplates-home)

As I celebrate my 4-year anniversary on the road, am I any closer to an answer?  What is home when, in the last six months, I’ve slept in seven beds across four states and two continents?

Let me remind myself, and you, dear reader: I was never meant to be gone this long. My escape from hometown DC – pandemic-ridden and ruled by robber-baron crazies – was meant to last a year. I needed a sabbatical from work and, as many of us did back then (and likely do, once again) some air and space to breath.  

When I began, back in June of 2021, my nomad sojourn was a chance to experience the beauty – not just ugliness – of our country – perhaps renew my faith in humanity. And, yes, traversing the country – landing in and exploring some of our nation’s truly most sacred places – Santa Fe, NM, Canyon Country, UT, Morro Bay, CA – I could not help but ask, again and again: Could this be home? 

Natural beauty was certainly a draw – as was good food and music – as was community – which was hardest to find because people take time. Over the first year, with only one-month stints in a place, I was little more than a tourist.

But something shifted when I landed in Asheville, NC, two years into my journey. The moment I entered the town, situated in a lush crevice of the Blue Ridge mountains, a broad, slow river winding smack through it, I felt home. Why?

Ellen Meloy, in The Anthropology of Turquoise, says it’s all about color, which is all about light. “It seems as if the right words can come only out of the space of a place you love. In canyon country they would begin with three colors: blue, terra-cotta, green. Sky, stone, life.”

Asheville, for me, was deep, dark green – the blue-black green of jade – of the Swannanoa River where I swam, face down, against the cold currents – then, relenting to nature’s force, I’d turn over and float on my back, gazing up at the pine canopy, dark silhouette against a lapis blue sky.

“For a homebody surrounded by the familiar or a traveler exploring the strange,” writes Meloy, “there can be no better guide to a place than the weight of its air, the behavior of its light, the shape of its water, textures of rock and feather, leaf and fur, and the ways that humans bless, mark, or obliterate them.”

Yes, I fell in love with the landscape. Then I fell in love with the people that loved the landscape, and a particular man that loved the landscape so much he played his guitar perched on a rock by the river where I swam. Then we swam and sang together.

It didn’t hurt that, early on, I was encouraged by the locals, three people in a row who said the same thing: “Asheville either sucks you in, or spits you out. And you, Marina (my newly adopted moniker), belong here.” Yes, in this place, I was inspired to inhabit my watery middle name.

I kept extending my lease in three-month increments of commitment. The longer I stayed and steeped myself in the place, the more I found community – artists and musicians, cyclists and naturalists and poets – the more I felt I did belong.

Then, in September of 2024, out of nowhere, Hurricane Helene hit Asheville and surrounding towns with a vengeance, destroying lives, devastating the landscape, and washing my little blossoming dream of home down the contaminated French Broad.

Mother Nature had sent me a brash message – nudging – or dragging me, kicking and screaming - back onto the road, again. Where I belonged. Heartbroken.

As I continued to grieve the loss of what might have been, I was drawn back to my starting point and birth home, Washington, DC – and to this island 140 miles east of the DMV.

For a while, I tried to abide my own nomad rule: “Never back track.” But here I was again, my fourth return to Chincoteague in four years.

What is it about the landscape here that draws me?

Flat and sandy yellow and soothing sea green, diffuse pastel skies, shade and shape the antithesis of the bold and curvaceous Blue Ridge. By the sea, I get perspective. The orange of sunrise seeps through my blinds to awaken me because there are no mountains in the way. I find rhythm in the tides, planning my beach walks according to the USGS tide-tables.

I stand at the ocean’s edge, an inviting teal this afternoon – and I am giddy as a kid, hearkening back to childhood trips to Ocean City. Or maybe the connection goes further back.

Quoting Melloy who quotes ecologist Edward O. Wilson: “People do not merely select roles suited to their native talents and personalities. They also gravitate to environments that reward their hereditary inclinations.”

True, the paternal Pellicciottos hailed from a fishing village called Vasto situated on the aquamarine Adriatic Sea. Apparently, they were netmakers. So, the sea is, literally, in my blood.

Gazing out, as far as my eye will spy, to the fine gray horizon line, I’m compelled to imagine places beyond – the coasts of Portugal and Spain – further east to the home of the ancestors – and further, still, into the future. This landscape gives me perspective.

As the first foamy wave envelops my feet, I whoop with glee. Then I count 1-2-3, diving head-first into the crest of an emerald monster, and pop up on the other side. Pisces the fish, I stroke and kick the chill out of me, happy in my element.

Yes, I miss my rivers – their mysterious, snaking charm – the allure of the voluptuous mountains – and the beloved community I cultivated.

But I am a veteran nomad. After four years on the road, the answer to my persistent question is obvious, even if it’s a little cliched: Home is where the heart is.

For now, my heart’s in Chincoteague.