by Richard Seifried
Signal Hill Musings
August, 2006
Do you ever have a feeling, a sense, that home is elsewhere, some specific place, area, or region? If you do, please let me know.
For Jean and me, Signal Hill is where we want to be for the rest of our lives. We are so content here, on this narrow ridge of the Ozarks, that we find it difficult to make ourselves go elsewhere.
As previous musings indicated, early this summer I once again experienced the vast grasslands and towering peaks of the northern Rockies and Great Plains.
Then, quite suddenly, the realization came upon me that those places could never make me feel at home, my spiritual home.
Ohio is my true home. I’m not referring to the noisy cities, crowded highways, the filling up of beautiful farm and woodland, the boring, look-alike housing developments and ghastly strip malls. What Ohio used to be, was still in my childhood and early adulthood, that was my true home.
The forests, rivers, and fields, with their varied fauna and flora, are my home.
Beautiful Ohio
My son, Steven, a doctor at the University of Hawaii, was also in Ohio at the same time I visited. Without any suggestion from me, Steve related that his home was Ohio, what Ohio was, the trees, rivers, weather, seasons, all of that. He went on to say that perhaps his realization was due to genetic memory, that somehow he felt, or sensed, at home in the woods that still remained.
After all, he remarked, our ancestors, the Germans at least, Celts, dwelled in similar environments, back in the days when Europe was clad in forests. Deciduous trees, humidity, heat, cold, wild flowers in profusion, the closeness and beauty of nature were all part of what he sensed to be “home.”
His trip to Ohio, in part, I think, was to expose his son, Nicholas, to the heritage that he possessed in his genetic makeup. He hoped that Nicholas would feel what my son and I knew to be true. I admit that the concept is rather mystical.
One day we drove to Miami County, near where I grew up. We visited a county preserve, Garbrey’s Old Woods. The mosquitoes were ferocious, creating an unpleasant, nearly unbearable situation. Still, I felt that I was once more at home.
We walked out along a wooden planked pathway, into the beech-maple forest. Amid the swampy pools stood the beech trees, the kind that I was so familiar with, smooth-barked, strong-trunked, yet providing hollow limbs and trunks for raccoon, opossum, squirrels, and many other wild creatures. Their limbs and roots stretched wide, creating their own domain amid the mature forest. Tall, narrow black cherry rose up toward the forest canopy. There were oaks, hickories, and of course, maples of several varieties. Some trees rose over one hundred feet in height. Beneath were hundreds of wildflower plants, vines, all sorts of species that were my childhood friends, which perhaps I had genetically experienced for hundreds of years.
Even with the mosquitoes, blood running down my forehead, I could have remained for hours. You see, I was home. I was once again experiencing the beautiful heritage that my forefathers had known.
Fall on Ohio’s Caesar Creek Lake
