Finding home

After months of planning, scheming, purchasing excessive quantities of synthetic fabrics and reading about the American West, I’m finally here. We’re all finally here, except “here” is a concept that seems somewhat distant and not applicable when the physical location I’m sleeping changes every two or three days. We’re about halfway through orientation at the Johnston Wilderness Campus, which is a piece of land with some cabins that Whitman owns in the Blue Mountains. So far, we’ve gone over logistical things like camp chores and how our impressively large kitchen works to feed twenty-four of us (21 participants plus three program staff). Let’s just say that the smallest pot we have is about twice the size of anything you’d find in a normal kitchen.

I don’t have any deep thoughts about the American West yet, but orientation has made me start thinking seriously about how you define things like home in a constantly shifting environment. In a way, this problem isn’t unique to Semester in the West. To be a young adult is to be constantly moving between dorm rooms, apartments, tents, houses, countries, family members and friends, probably without staying somewhere consistently for more than a year. If home can’t be defined by living space, what does the concept become? Is it about a broader area, like Walla Walla or Eastern Washington? Can home be an area as large as “the American West”? Is home about the things you have with you? Or does the space just become smaller, so that my home for this semester is my sleeping bag and whatever extra clothes can fit in it with me? Maybe home is about companionship and people more than anything else. Maybe through this semester, I’ll be able to redefine my comfort area to be anywhere I’m with this group, anywhere I’m outside with enough to stay warm and full and engaged. Or maybe home is a goal, something in the future that you build for yourself or find after years of searching.