Steem Wars: Day 3: Home
Dear Diary,
I'm not myself today.
This entry will not be all that cheerful.
Gazing into the battle field haze, my mind is exhausted from lack of sleep and wandering.
My bones are aching and every muscle is sore from marching to and fro, hither and tither, looking for those infernal Aussie invaders.
I'm weary on day three of the war, and my thoughts have turned to my home.
Normally I'm the platoon clown. Today, I'm just worn out.
Physically, Spiritually and Mentally.
Home.
They say it's where the heart is. It's wherever you lay your head. It's the hardest place to leave, and the best place to come back to. Some say you can't go back. Some say you never left. I say, I'm not even sure where it is anymore.
Certainly I was born and that had to be somewhere.
Most American's think of where they were born and grew up as their home town. Mine was not more then 15 miles from our Nation's capital in fact, in a sprawl of strip malls and fast food restaurant laden suburbs known as Northern Virginia. My town was called Vienna, Virginia.
It's hard to tell where NoVa stops and Washington D.C. starts and if it weren't for the Potomac river, it would be nearly indistinguishable where Virginia turns into DC and DC turns into Virginia's twin on the other side of town, Southern Maryland.
But I left there two decades ago. I barely remember it now, and hardly recognized it the last time I was there in 2002, before the wars took over my existence.
My prior life lead me through 2 marriages, one quite long and one quite short, and away from Vienna, to no less than five other states including Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida before I eventually landed solo, and quite unexpectedly in North Carolina, not far from the Blue Ridge Mountains National Park and the east coast's tallest mountain, Mt. Mitchell maybe 10 or 20 miles to either from my current bug out base. The place I call "home" most recently and where I will likely spend my remaining days.
In those times I lived at some of the highest altitudes in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and at sea level with a door that opened onto the beach in South Florida. And lot's of the spaces in between.
But I never have felt settled. I own 17 acres of land now. I have tiny off grid cabin, close to a mountain spring on my property where I haul water in buckets to my cabin and my animals. I have no plumbing and just a small solar setup to provide some light in the evening. But certainly not enough power for much, if any, comforts such as a microwave or a coffee maker or a television. I am able to charge my laptop and phone, from where I get my internet so that I can remain in touch with civilization. But I have little else there.
After the divorces, with a daughter already at an adult age from the first marriage, I bounced around. No particular plan but as a career tech veteran, I always found the corporate gypsy life would lead me to next location based on the job offer the latest recruiter was offering to upgrade me with.
Until one day I realized. It didn't really matter where I was. My father passed at 78, my mother settled in for a few more years and passed last year at 84. My daughter lives with her Man in Tennessee and I had felt there was no particular place I needed to be or to go for over a decade since the second divorce.
So one day I sold everything. Literally EVERYTHING I owned in my large four bedroom beach home that would not fit in a small van sized 20 foot long RV camper and a small utility trailer behind it. Just the necessities and heirlooms I thought were so important to keep and carry with me.
I thought, I will head west. No reason. It was just somewhere else to be, something different. I actually bought 40 acres of land, site unseen in a strange twist, on Ebay of all places. I packed the stuff, and left Florida on my way to a place I had purchased, but never seen.
Only fate was having none of that.
The cheap used RV broke down climbing the mountains of the western Carolinas. The transmission and brakes all at once.
I limped into a campground and parked. No plan. As usual.
4 years later I am still here. I was able to gracefully break the land contract. I didn't lose much, it was junk desert land anyway and had cost so little, that as I said, I was able to actually buy it on Ebay.
To be honest, the story is so long and full of tragic details, that it pains me to write it here in my diary even now. I'm not sure I want to see all of the story in print and tangible as the truth anyway.
So I sit here on this steemwar battle field and I think about the other soldiers, always talking about how beautiful home is. Waiting to get back to their wives, their children, their careers and their mundane, non-steemwar existences.
I just have hauling water and the freezing winters and the cold spring water outdoor showers and mud, so much red clay mountain mud on my 1/2 mile private road back to the cabin. And after that the brutally hot and humid summers without A/C.
People think my lifestyle is adventurous, glamorous, exciting. "I'm living their dream!", they exclaim when I say have the mountain place.
But I'm reminded of the words of the 75 year old local black man I had befriended one day when we realized we both always ate breakfast alone at the same country roadside cafe every Saturday morning. The former 40 year custodian of the local grade school who waved at every one of all ages in town as I sometimes would drive around on errands so that he could get his groceries and things.
One day I said to him as we crested a hill and the Blue Ridge ranges sprawled out before us, "the mountains sure look beautiful today." Making small talk as we drove through town.
"Beautiful?" he exclaimed? "Cork, those mountains ain't no beautiful, them mountains will KILL you, they're harsh and tough and there ain't nuffin' beautiful about them"
I remember thinking, "wow, am I going to turn into this man, alone, at 70, and bitter beyond seeing beauty in nature?"
And as I look around myself, 4 years later after my arrival in these killer mountains, thinking back on the losses of my life, the wins and the setbacks that took them away from me every time I achieved them.
I realized I already had become that man, and I'm only 48. It would be a long road driving to 70 and however much past that I can make it before I run out of gas one last time.
These mountains haven't killed me yet and they may not, but I will likely die in them anyway. I don't know where else I would go.
So I guess that's it, dear diary. I best take care of eating this stale steemwar MRE and get some rest tonight. Here in this bed of pine needles and dirt under this tall old mountain hemlock.
Tomorrow will be here soon and the war will continue.
Tonight, this, is my home.
As I drift to sleep I remember the day I bought the land and took possession of my little 17 rural mountain side acres. Undeveloped land, rough, forest covered, and all that mud. I remember the feeling of taking my father's old army machete and a hatchet he had bought me for my birthday as a young Boy Scout of just 14 or 15 or so and beginning to blaze a trail up to the tallest tree in the corner of the property, surrounded by much smaller scrub sprung forth in the aftermath of the mountain having been logged many years before.
For some reason this lone Hemlock had prevailed and was now king of the hill. And that day, armed only with my dad's old machete and my old hatchet in hand, both of them, precious heirlooms that I had thought must be brought with me on this journey in that little RV where I could only fit so many things, I cut a trail.
The lonely old Hemlock, and the lonely old man. Struggling to become king of the hill. Any hill. King of something. King of nothing. And I've been there ever since. And that's where these rugged, beautifully tragic old mountains will absorb my bones one day.
And that's when I hope to finally go home.
Until next time, dear diary.
Hero Standard by: Private Benjamin ssn: 867-5309
Tags: #steemwars #teamamerica
[edit:] Just FYI, I'm buying all the bot boosters, because I have a stalker rageflagging all of my posts down as well as those of some other minnows I know that he is jealous of and I don't know any bigger whales than the jerky guy to boost them back visible, so I have to pay bots so you can see these. I just wanted to explain why Im boosting my game entries. Thanks. Sorry you all had to see that. -
