That “Going Home” Kind of Feeling

Do you have a place that you feel really “at home”? Not necessarily a specific house, although it could be, but more like a community that you feel at home in where you get that warm fuzzy, comfortable feeling?

I started thinking about this because I heard a couple women talking on CBC radio about northern BC. The one woman said that she has lived and worked all over the world and yet when she gets on the tiny airplane that takes her back to Terrace, BC, back to her mother and father’s house, the house where she grew up, she gets that “going home” feeling.

And that started me thinking about where I go to get that going home feeling. I lived in Prince George, a place people from southern BC call northern BC, even though it is really only halfway up the province. I liked Prince. I liked the people and the rough and tumble community. But I never felt “at home” there.

I also lived in the west Kootenays. I loved it there too. I liked the people, the arid climate, and the semi-conservative hippy-dippy community. But I never felt completely “at home” there either.

However, when I would drive west and rise up as I left Osoyoos, I would see the western mountains stick their pointy little peaks up into the sky and my heart would skip a beat in excitement. Driving into Manning Park I could feel the “coming home” vibe rattling my cage.

I would get to Hope, where the Fraser River leaves the canyon and opens out into the top end of the Fraser Valley. I would turn right and head up the Fraser Canyon and I knew that I was home. I love the Fraser Canyon. Travel from Hope up through Yale and if you look up the mountainsides you would know that Ansel Adams would have gone all ape to see mountains of this magnitude and raw beauty.

Up the canyon to Boston Bar where the canyon opens up a little. Keep going to Lytton, to the confluence of the mighty Fraser and the Thompson Rivers. Lytton, Canada’s official hotspot. From Lytton you can continue to follow the nasty, winding road along the Fraser up to Lillooet or you can follow the along the Thompson to Spences Bridge.

Anywhere in the Fraser Canyon I feel at home. I love the Fraser River and all the eclectic little communities that perch on the cliffs of the canyon. Home for me will always be the Fraser Canyon.

Where is your home?


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7 responses to “That “Going Home” Kind of Feeling”

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stacey Robinsmith. Stacey Robinsmith said: Where is home for you? My blog post on going home; http://bit.ly/bBegN4 […]

  2. Tanya Smith Avatar
    Tanya Smith

    As far as being in BC goes, little ol’ North Delta is as close to home as it gets for me; I can still feel the wave of joy and relief that I felt upon first driving through, almost disbelieving that I had finally found somewhere that fit nicely. But REAL home is southern Ontario – absolutely, hands-down.

  3. caitlyn James Avatar

    I left the BC Coast for the Okanagan kicking & screaming in 1991. Sure, I was going to a lakeview property in a stunning rural orchard region, and that softened the blow – but I was leaving home… or so I thought.

    A week after moving in I took a midnight walk. Whoa! On the coast the evening is ALWAYS cool. Always. Ocean breezes & all that. It’s damp & cool, not unpleasant, but the warm caressing wind of that midnight walk, the gazillion stars, and the faint scent of sagebrush brought the thought, “I have come home.”

    Ever since, I feel that lift of which you speak, Stacey, when I reach the T intersection at Kaleden (about 15 minutes down the road from Penticton.) I am home. This, in spite of my certainty, a certainty built from a couple of childhood camping trips that the Okanagan was brutally hot, dry, and basically an ugly desert.

    After a couple of years my eyes had adjusted to the beauty of the gentle hills covered in hundreds of shades of sagebrush green & sunflower yellow with grey-blue accents. Back then, a trip to the coast felt suffocating. All the green was oppressive, it was a rainforest-jungle choking around me. The air itself was heavy (scientifically, this is true, not a delusional perception) with moisture, unpleasantly so.

    Ironically, I live in my dream house, now, but I am back on the Wet Coast/ The garden of rhododendrons, tulips, early peas, rhubarb, and so many more beautiful colours of spring match my visual of heaven. My house is a hundred year old tiny Victorian. Cute and renovated into cozy, beautiful & functional. But, when I round any of the corners on my way home, there is no psychic/spiritual recognition that this is the place that I was meant to inhabit.

    Home is 4 and a half hours down the road.

  4. Wendy Avatar
    Wendy

    Where in the West Kootenays? We used to camp all around there when I was a child. My whole family (except my mom) were born in Kimberley.

    For me, home is the Seymour area of North Vancouver. I lived there for 15 years of my life, through my teens and some of my twenties. My grandparents still live there, and aunt and uncle. Driving back to visit them, I feel more centred, and comfortable.

    However, I’ve lived in Coquitlam now for almost 7 years, and it’s starting to feel that way for me.

  5. stacey Avatar
    stacey

    Wendy; the West Kootenays from Rock Creek to Christina Lake were home to me for a short stretch of my life. Love that part of the province and my friends from there.

  6. Wendy Avatar
    Wendy

    My husband’s aunt and uncle have a cabin at Christina Lake, and we camp there every summer with them. It’s a beautiful part of the world indeed!

  7. stacey Avatar
    stacey

    There are getting to be very few “cabins” left at the lake. The trend now is that they are tearing down houses for the lot size to build what you would have to call mansions. The Lake community is definitely changing.