There’s no place like home
HUMAN INTEREST
BY DOUG COOMER
Pick up virtually any outdoor-themed publication, or visit any nature-oriented website these days, and you are bound to come across an article extolling the positive mental and physical effects of spending time out of doors. This could include anything from a simple afternoon walk around your neighborhood to an extended excursion covering several weeks. While there is really no doubt, scientifically or otherwise regarding this, there is yet another positive aspect that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen or heard mentioned. While I am obviously referring to something longer than a short trek around the block, have you ever made note of how good it feels to make it back home? Pulling into the driveway, especially after a long trip, I always feel a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Not only due to where I have been and what I have been through, but simply in the fact that I was able to do it at all. We all know that it takes time and work to plan even a short outdoor trip, and we also know, too well, how easily we can let it slip away. More times than not, if I’m honest about it, I feel a sense of melancholy on the trip home. Sad that the journey has ended, and that another in the hundreds of work weeks in life lies ahead. However, unless you’ve decided to drop out of society, you will have arrived back at the place you will spend the majority of your life … home.
Yes … home. The place where you can: have clean running water at the flick of the wrist, adjust the environment you live in with the tip of your finger, open the door of a large electrified box and pull out an ice cold drink, point a plastic device with buttons at a screen and watch the world go by, walk under a blast of temperature controlled water and wash your body, slip into a soft, clean, pillow-covered bed, walk into a secluded room that has a porcelain device with reading material beside it, and last but not least, hopefully, recall a multitude of family memories involving uproarious laughter that you may have mistakenly taken for granted.
The outing you have just returned from has not only put things back into perspective for you and allowed you to reset the stress meter but hopefully has also helped you to take stock in your home life as well – perhaps the most important thing you may ever have. The real key, of course, is to appreciate all moments in life, no matter what they may be as they are the ingredients in the recipe that produce our character. In all things, there is a teaching that we alone can choose to use for better or worse.