Welcome to Free Press Free Write, a weekly column written by the staff of The New School Free Press. Each week a new staff member might share a story, memory, maybe a DIY, or a week-in-review. Free Write is a space where our reporters, artists and editors can express themselves through writing. In times like these, writing can be an escape.
Our story editor and reporter, Riley Boice, a third-year Journalism + Design student at Lang, reflects on moving back home to Idaho last year and how her definition of “home” has changed.
This Monday marked a year spent home in Sun Valley, Idaho since fleeing my Williamsburg apartment last March. This COVID-19 “anniversary” has me reflecting on the idea of place, the meaning of home, and how we make meaning when the tables turn on everything that grounds us.
I love the mountains. Even the steepest, most foreboding peaks feel like a hug. Every time I return from New York I cry when they first come into view because they are home to me as much as the house I was born in or my family and friends.
Sun Valley is America’s first ski resort, home to the world’s first chairlift and touting a long, old Hollywood history. Growing up in a place that exists solely because of its landscape, with some of the country’s largest wilderness at your back door, gives you a strong sense of place – of deep connection to the land you live on.
When I returned home because of COVID-19, I felt safe and lucky to have my remote corner of the world to escape to. Everyone came back home in those first few months, and it felt like high school again which was fun for a while and then deeply unnerving. And perhaps in an act of divine foreshadowing, Sun Valley then became a COVID-19 hotspot, rivalling New York City and Wuhan, China for cases per capita. This was the first time I didn’t feel totally comfortable and protected in my little town in the mountains.
I moved to Los Angeles after high school, unsure about spending my time or money on an education without direction. I hadn’t made friends with my passion for design, still attached to the notion that I was not an artist just because my mother is. For three years I fought the feeling that I would never find a place that felt like home the way Idaho does. I tried and failed to find that feeling of peace; in work that didn’t speak to me, disingenuous friendships and a boy I thought I would always love. My acceptance to The New School gave me the freedom to stop trying to love L.A. and an opportunity to go home without the guilt of giving up.
Now, after months at home, Sun Valley still feels like a piece of my heart I returned to, but it is no longer the place I belong.
I’ve realized that in all the time I spent reading textbooks under the blue streetlight on my couch on the corner of South 3rd and Havemeyer, or trekking against the wind to Murray’s Bagels between classes, I was creating a new home. I have fostered this home for myself, surrounded myself with people that share my interests, and an environment that provides me the resources to pursue those interests, to find inspiration and drive to grow. My home in New York City is one that I have built, despite the landscape (which is undeniably stinky and rough), rather than in deep connection with it. My New York doesn’t make me cry when I see it from the plane, or bring me a deep sense of peace. Rather, it brings me a sense of true alignment with the person I am right now and excites me about who I can become.
What I need out of a home is different now, as I think it is for many in this time. Some are seeking offices, places of worship or creativity, places of peace and places of excitement and growth. What I have always sought from my home – comfort and support – has shifted, as our collective clarity on what a future might look like has become all the more difficult to see.
This week I’ve realized that what I know about the meaning of home has changed profoundly over this year. With that shift, I am feeling the pieces of some of my most rigid perceptions begin to move. I am beginning to relearn what I know about time and what it means to spend it meaningfully. I am reevaluating what it means to be close versus truly connected, and what I need from my relationships – most importantly with myself. Sometimes true knowledge, about anything, hinges on re-discovering one small thing we thought we knew.