R and J in the USA

After Julie completed her Indiana state capitol tour, she decided to wander the building on her own, heading up to see the “bison-tennial” statue she heard was worth seeing on the third floor.

On her way back down, she passed the Supreme Court room that had been the last stop on the tour. Pointing back to the Supreme Court room, the capitol policemen manning the desk outside the Supreme Court said to her, “What did you think?”

“Beautiful,” Julie acknowledged.

Then the standard conversation got rolling and Julie saw it as a chance to learn more about Indiana. 

The gentleman expressed affection for Indiana as the place he grew up and where his family is, but also lamented some of the limitations of life in the state. Not as many opportunities as he might like.

Then he asked, with his eyes lighting up, “Have you been to North Carolina yet?”

“I have been there before,” Julie said, “But not yet on this trip. We are looking forward to making it there towards the end of our trip.”

He then began to wax poetic about North Carolina, and South Carolina too. 

“Someday, if I can, that’s where I want to go. That’s my dream.”

It was neat to hear someone so passionate about a place. Julie began to appreciate the relationship between people and place. There seem to be three fundamental dynamics that we’ve found about people and place on the road. There are more, but these ones really stick out.

One, the relationship people have to the place they are from, to the place they were born and raised. For lots of people, we hear the story of growing up in a place, leaving it to go out and see the world, developing a new perspective or appreciation for the place they had grown up, and then feeling a draw to return home.

Then there are the people that grow up in a place and visit another place that somehow just captures their heart. Julie loves hearing stories about this somewhat mysterious bond that a human soul can have with a certain place. Julie knows people who have been hit by the magic of Vermont and just feel that is their place, or the call of Oregon or Colorado, or Maine, or the hustle and bustle of New York City. Sometimes people go places and something in that place just says, “You are not from here, but this is your home.” Throughout this trip, we would run into both kinds of people.

Then there are the people who, like this gentleman, feel torn between the two, who feel some tie to a place because it’s home. It’s where their history and their people are, yet their heart is somehow in another place. Home is where the heart is and sometimes the heart finds itself in more than one place.