Home Sacred Home
In a recent conversation with rancher and famed western artist Rachel Brownlee, I was struck by her obvious love for the land that makes up this ecologically unique area we call the Sandhills in Nebraska.
It’s always good to find someone who shares your perspective, especially on something as deeply personal as one’s own home and family ties to the same.
It has been one of the greatest gifts in my returning home—this reconnection to the unrelenting honesty and raw beauty of this area.
Over the years of being away so long, a part of me had forgotten how it feels to be rooted in one’s place of origin, the security in that. Bonds solidified in earlier, formative years seem to be the strongest, so there was a part of me that still remembered, and was quick to reawakened upon my return.
People not from here, that are not familiar with the culture and history of this land and its people that have learned how to live into the distinctive features of the environment, are often blind to its offerings. They give it names like Middle of Nowhere, Fly-Over Country, Barren Land, Bleak. But those of us with an intimate connection to the Sandhills region, recognize the nuances of this unique landscape for the treasure it is.
And more than this, in an age when so many people are tragically disconnected from the natural world, to be able to recognize the abundance, the richness of these natural elements, in a way that fills you up until they become a part of you, that is quite a gift, indeed. To know a place in all it’s many incarnations of seasons, weather, flora and fauna; to live rooted into a rare landscape as close to ancient and untouched as is likely to be found any more—these have the power to anchor a person in important ways. Even in times of hardship, or perhaps especially then, when we find ourselves feeling our way through pain and grief, it is then that our earthly grounding to the beauty and harshness that exist so easily together here can hold us and give us peace. From the glittering magnificence in a sunny snow-bound day, to the darkest, stormy night, to know a place like this so well as to contain its qualities within yourself is to understand how sacred is this place, and so, too, life itself.
