Slowly Becoming Wild

How the Places We Live Subtly Shape Who We Become

I moved to the forested cove I currently live in nearly 19 1/2 years ago. It was March 2007 when I packed up the belongings of the tiny bungalow I was renting in west Asheville, located in a densely packed neighborhood, and moved out to the property my husband (then boyfriend) Glenn had purchased in 2005. Before he bought it, the 11 acres our home is sited on had been an organic edible herb and flower farm. Three poly-tunnel hoop houses still stood on the property, one 50 feet long, down in the area we call the “lower field”, while two 25-footers were located up closer to the house, vestiges of another time, another set of lives.

Prior to that, I’d been living in a series of rented homes and apartments, all set in areas with sidewalks, homes within view, and all the noises associated with urban living. I knew if the neighbors were arguing, if a car alarm had been activated, and when the postal carrier was likely to walk by. My childhood and adolescence was characterized by frequent moving. I went to 8 different schools as my mom regularly relocated us between Virginia, North Carolina, and the Florida panhandle (where, over a 1 1/2 year span, we lived in 3 different dwellings).

I was also deeply self conscious. While I didn’t work too hard on my hair or makeup, I certainly didn’t neglect my appearance, either. I spent a good deal of my free time thrift shopping, looking at used clothing online, and planning outfits. For years, I dyed my hair jet black. I was aware of how I walked, and what I said (or refrained from saying), and how I might be perceived by others.

Over my time living out here in the woods, I’ve begun to shed that mantle of concern. While it certainly might be owing to my status as a wife in a longterm committed relationship, or as a mom to two compassionate, empathic sons, or as a person steadily building and crafting a body of work they feel proud of and grateful for, or even simply as a human going through the unexpected gifts of perimenopause (wherein I simply care less what others think), my change of mental state has largely been informed by my going into the woods.

I work from home. I also homeschooled both of my kids for some time. Neither of my sons went to daycare or preschool, owing largely to limited finances and having a spouse around at all times to share the responsibility of childcare and educating. As such, I’m often found here in the cove, working, mom-ing, and simply living. As I’ve made this tucked-in nook, nestled half a mile down a gravel road, my own over these ensuing 19 years, I have steadily begun to become more like the woods.

Wild, untamed spaces, thinking, points of view, and ways of being are deeply important to Glenn and I. So much so, in fact, that we gave our firstborn son “Wild” as his middle name (his first name, “Huxley”, means both “woodsman” and “a clearing in a wood”; apropos, doubly so). To be rooted in a physical place for an extended period of time, especially one such as the one I inhabit, gently, glacially, tenderly informs who you become. I have, in this expansive place, slowly become wild.

Wildflowers bloom when they’re ready, not on account of the readiness of the plants around them. The cinnabar chanterelles that pop up in our woods don’t mind being enrobed in soil. The cicadas make a ruckus without concern for elevated decibel level. The oak, and the poplar, and the maple unfurl, display, and, later, release their leaves at their own pace, unencumbered by arbitrary constraints, taking their cues instead from the sun itself.

As I moved through the rhythm of the seasons in this untamed, forested pocket, I found myself moving differently. Responding more assuredly. Caring less and less about expectations, demands, and assumptions. Rooted in place, I leaned into the wild.

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the goings on, doings, predilections, and preferences of others. Thank goodness people live and love and thrive in cities! Urban density and vertical growth are far better for the environment than sprawl. Furthermore, some people feel most alive in the throbbing pulse of proximity to others, to kinetic, dynamic sounds and activity, to unexpected and random human interactions.

As for me, I like it wild. If you were to visit us, you’d find cobwebs in the corners. You’ll find dog hair on the couch. You’d see and interact with items defined by patina, and wear, and age. You’d find the four human inhabitants to have untamed hair, the yard to be far from tidy, and the sense of timing and urgency to be a fluid one. You’d also, on account of these things, feel very, very welcome. Nothing is precious in our home aside from the beings within it.

I first watched the film Dead Poets Society right around my 14th birthday. It proved to be one of the touchstone, formative films informing the trajectory of my life. I remember crying through most of it (I’m a Cancer, it can’t be helped), but especially when Neil, one of the principal characters, reads part of this quote by Thoreau:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

― Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods to marry and merge my life with a man (we married on our property). Along the way, the woods married and merged with me. The places we live shape who we become. In our little corner of Earth, you’ll find where the wild the things are.

I hope wherever in the world you are, you find yourself there, too.