Nomad or Local?

My summer nomadic life has come to an end. The flow of travel, trekking, packing, unpacking, trekking, planting, harvesting and gathering is no longer coursing through my body, no longer dictating my daily actions. I’m in one place, going out for day hikes, cleaning up in the garden and protecting winter crops from oncoming cold weather where needed. I could travel if I wanted but my body is responding to the longer nights and wants to sleep more, stay warm, eat and fatten up. Hibernation is setting in and I’m at odds with it, I miss the light.
I think about nomadic tribes. They hunker down for the winter months or wet season; they send their children to school, fix their gear, make hard cheeses that need months to ripen, they sleep and tell stories. Do they miss the open steppes, the high ridges where they herd their flocks? Do they miss the hardship of living outdoors, packing and unpacking their shelter in pursuit of new grazing grounds, as they settle in their more elaborate winter housing and face the hardship of winter or wet survival? I’d like to know. 

I believe our vacation patterns are a remnant of the nomadic life our forebears lived, the appendix of our life’s digestive track. My recent forebears were farmers. Their vacations were a 3-day trip away from the farm to visit relatives. The farm couldn’t survive without them away for longer times. The animals, the crops needed them to be present. Since we’ve become less connected to natural cycles by living in cities and small towns and buy our food from a grocery store, we can close up our homes, turn down the blinds, and go away for as long as our jobs and pocketbooks allow us. Flying in a plane, sailing across the water, driving a car or motorhome down the road, or for some, riding a bicycle or carrying a backpack, we become temporary nomads.
I’ve wanted to explore and travel since I was young. The urge to see other places, meet other cultures has shaped my world view. I have often felt more at-home on the road than settled in one place. My at-home feeling isn’t dependent on a home. When I roam the world, move about from place to place, I feel connected to something bigger than family or a local community. I feel connected to life on earth.
 
Yet, every year at the end of summer, I return to place and home. The tension between sedentary and nomadic life is the paradox of human existence, the koan we are given to enlighten ourselves. The tension between the known and uncertainty. Experiencing that tension teaches us about the essence of living. 
So when I settle in for a long winter’s night, I already know that my sedentary life is temporary. The temporal quality of winter hibernation puts me in touch with the temporal nature of things, and urges me to make the most of the now. It is the same temporal quality of living I experience when I travel, because the traveling day, the place along the journey, the experience of a new place is always a passing one. 
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I will take the hint from the nomadic tribes who use their winter or wet season to stock up, fix gear, sleep (repair of the body takes place during sleep), and learn new skills I can use when I go out on the road again. I will send this old body back to school, study languages, write and read stories, care for minor ailments that need attention. The dried herbs and colorful canned goods on the shelf, the frozen veggies in the freezer, give me a sense of accomplishment and security. I can join in celebrations of thanks, welcoming the season with those who form my tribe.

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