[I can’t believe it ‘s been a month since Michael and I drove eastward to Curlew Lake for a few days of fishing and relaxing. So fast and far has time travelled. My intention to write immediately, has become an exercise in memory.]

I had found cabin #13 online, though the year before I had driven past Curlew Lake on a return trip from Blue Stem Nursery on Lake Christine in British Columbia. This remote part of Washington had an appeal, partly because it was far enough away to feel totally different than our valley home and partly because it was simply beautiful. Fisherman’s Resort where we rented cabin#13 was a homely place in it’s lack of pretension and run down condition, yet it’s position on a peninsula jutting into the narrow 7 mile long Curlew Lake—more like a bloated deep river— was lovely.

The days were perfect: dry, crisp, yet with a sun that still warmed. The nights star-slathered and cold. Though in no way was this place exotic (a 6 hour drive nearly to Canada, nearly to Idaho) the ancient pine-felted mountains and glacier sculpted valleys had a comforting unfamiliarity.

The British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips said, “The most uncanny place is one’s home. As in it appears to be the most familiar place, but in fact it is the most unfamiliar”. So why was I zinging with nostalgia in this unfamiliar place? Certainly the 50-year-old linoleum floor was the same Sears linoleum that covered the wreck room of the house I grew up in. But there were more mysterious signals. The piney smoke in the evening air smelled of someplace I could not place. Someplace I had nestled in: hung my hat, laid my head. Recalling maybe the brief months I lived on the Island of Elba, or in Sequoia National Park where I washed dishes for a few months before coming to Seattle. Places I called home briefly, and so never really left, the longing to return an attachment much stronger than to any of my “long-term” homes.

But what spoke of home the most was the changeable surface of the water. I have spent many days on lakes, especially in my home state, Wisconsin, staring at the surface of the water as it folds and unfolds like a card trick. The hypnosis-inducing motion calms me. It was crazy how quickly I was subdued by this tranquil place, set free of my anxieties and stresses in ways my home, my domicile never can. Our farm in the Snoqualmie Valley is a demanding place, whether it is spring planting or fall harvesting, or a rug to vacuum and dishes to wash.  I did wash dishes in cabin #13, but very few and in the calm state of mind it felt meditative, not just another thing to do.

Michael and I had talked about moving here. We do that nearly everywhere we go, a symptom of the never ending search of our restless souls for home. But as we explored the idea: the great distances to hospitals, airports, friends and family, the harsh winters and short hot dry summers we decided quickly against it. I think the home we long for wasn’t that place, or any place, at all. It was the smooth tranquility of the surface of the lake, fishing pole in hand, not catching a thing.

We did eventually catch some fish near the end of our brief stay. And meandered home through the sublime arid landscape of eastern Washington. Nothing could feel farther from home and yet be so close to the soggy hollow in which we live than these austere landscapes.

So why do I feel so at home in them?

Roosevelt Lake, actually the impounded Columbia River, behind the Grand Coulee Damn.

The rolling ancient sand dunes of Swawilla Basin with Roosevelt Lake in the background.

Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) one of the last plants blooming at Dry falls State Park.

Back to the car and back home; our last stop at Dry Falls State Park.

October is a busy month. The harvest, the fall work projects, events, and accidents. I want to come home and just settle in, down, or out. I just want to be home.
Living in a culture that puts such great importance on the home—Homeland Security, Home Depot; as well as Simon and Garfunkle singing “Homeward Bound”— it’s amazing how often we are not at home, or should I speak for myself: how often I am not at home. Sometimes I think I feel more at home in my truck. Experience those feelings of comfort, privacy and safety associated with home more when I’m hurling down the highway then I do in my own living room.

What prompted this whole needy curiosity about what and where is home was a simple homely act. I had chopped open one of my homegrown cabbages to make coleslaw a few days ago. When I did, out from the luxuriously crunchy folds of foliage came slugs, earthworms, earwigs and one beetle I could not identify. They all went scurrying, slithering and slimming across the chopping block.

I am a home wrecker.

What a safe place the interior of a cabbage is: frost-free, dry, hidden. Just about everything one would want in home.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines home as a place where a person or animal dwells. I didn’t know when I planted that subdivision of cabbages in May that I was building homes here in the rural and fertile soils of the Snoqualmie Valley.

And that by making coleslaw I was destroying one.

I am pleasantly puzzled and curious about home— it seems like everyone has one, even if it is only under a bridge or in a cabbage, not furnished with Martha Stewart’s linens or Paula Deen’s cookware.

A few years ago I  heard the Dalai Lama speak in Seattle. Someone in the audience asked what he thought of America. He was rather wistful in his assessment. He said there are so many beautiful large houses here, but no one is ever home. Everyone laughed, a queasy sort of laugh one laughs when a truth hits the gut.

I have always questioned all this busy-ness with home, not others’ so much as mine.

So I went, as I do, to the OED to find out what the word home meant. An ancient word, home, originated in Old Frisian, with many cognates in other old languages, leading me to believe it may be one of the first words we spoke, when we humans began our long verbal experience on this planet.

The OED had around 15 distinct definitions for home, but all were similar in referring to place.

As a gardener I am very involved in place; as a residential —what a sterile heartless word, unlike home so elemental, like mom and om—gardener I am involved with homes all week long. In some ways I never leave home.  As I writer I now have become preoccupied with the idea of home, beyond the ancient round taste of the word in my mouth. A beautiful word like fire— specific, simple, definitive.

I will be blogging about home over the next few months examining and reveling in  others’ and my own notions of home.

But first a homely act:

I will share a recipe for “Gretchen’s 9 Day Coleslaw”.

(as a cook I have luckily developed a sense of proportion, so I rarely measure; so measurements are not exact: you’ll have to adapt as you see fit with this perfectly mutable recipe)

• start with a 2lb white cabbage ( finding a cabbage that is exactly 2 pounds may be hard, so adjust the rest of the ingredients based on the size of you cabbage; since this salad last 9 days in the fridge I make a large batch that I can eat daily)
• quarter, core and slice cabbage into thin strips, put in to a large enough bowl that it can be tossed easily
• core and slice 2 sweet red peppers to a dimension similar to the cabbage add to bowl
• peel, quarter and slice 1 medium red onion ( or other sweet onion, regular onions are too strong for this coleslaw)
• Sprinkle vegetables with 2 teaspoons salt (more or less); mix thoroughly and set aside
• in a small pot put ½ cup cider vinegar, ½ cup sugar and1-2 teaspoons celery seed; slowly heat to dissolve sugar, but do not boil, remove from heat and let cool slightly
• Pour warm brine over vegetables and toss repeatedly to coat and slight wilt vegetables; at this point I leave it on the counter the rest of the day and toss it every time I go into the kitchen, I think this is the key to this coleslaw
• Before I go to bed I put it in a tightly sealing jar so I can shake it whenever I go into the refrigerator, it helps to ensure a uniform pickling of the vegetables

You can eat it right away—it is delicious crunchy and fresh—or wait a few days. To me it is best from day 3 to 6. After nine days (if there is any left) it becomes rather limp though still edible. I drain some and use the pickled vegetable on chicken sandwiches, delicious! I have also played with this recipe by using coriander or dill seed instead of celery seed. It all works but I prefer the celery seed; it reminds me of my mother’s homemade coleslaw.

9 Day Coleslaw at day 6: