Journey Part 2: Where is home not?

Story by Aleksandra Ørbeck - Nilssen.

“Where is home not?”. I will dwell in this sentence.

After a while of dwelling, I realized that that sentence became home too. In my life, I have travelled and searched for places full of experiences and adventures that could inspire a sense of belonging.  Between destinations and choosing new ones, I sometimes felt lost in not knowing how to answer where home is or where home should be, but it also inspired a bigger question. In our lives of searching, we can find the greatest of answers if we just dare to stand in homelessness for a while.

In our world, there are very few places where we can experience silence and stillness. Our thoughts and senses are overstimulated with external noise, constant input and expectations. Overload of information both audibly and visually is stretching our nervous system to a point where we are no longer capable of connecting to ourselves, nature, our creative heart, our purpose or others. We often find ourselves walking around in circles, not moving forward, feeling lonely and stressed.

I would like to take you on a journey through to the notion of rewilding and why it is so important for the journey of finding home within ourselves.

There is a vast, undiscovered terrain inside of you – an inner landscape that holds your special expression in the world. This place is full of love, dreams, visions, stories, songs, dances and truth that are waiting to be engaged with.

Trees and flowers are at home everywhere; their roots penetrate the ground and tap into the totality of the earth. The soil only gives birth to the trees and flowers that it knows it can sustain, and the trees and flowers decide to stick around as long as they keep growing on this "address". If the ground fails them, the ground loses them, and the tree eventually goes back into becoming more soil for something else to grow. Cycles which are similar to our human relationships or even the human experience.

People were the ones who started giving multiple addresses to trees and flowers. We found a way to extract them, put them into temporary pot homes before we finally replant them on a new address. When you remove something from its original home and plant it elsewhere, you have to take the responsibility to tend to it and make sure that the ground it's on has enough of everything it needs to continue growing.

Animals are at home everywhere. They live where they roam in what is called a home range. A home range is the wider geographical area that an animal will seldom leave unless they migrate in order to breed elsewhere. An animal's home range is usually much larger than its territory. A home range is not actively defended, and home ranges may overlap similar to when several people live in different apartments in one building. The building is the home range, and the apartment is the territory. Or the capital is the territory, and the country is the home range. The size of a home range will depend on The density of resources, population density, competition with other species, and the position in the hierarchy of the individual or group.

A territory provides a safe place for young to be raised and usually contains a breeding or nesting site at its centre. Some organisms only have territories or defend themselves more vigorously during mating season. A territory can be marked out using movements, sound, or scent, or in the human case, we just install an alarm. However, it costs time and ENERGY to defend a territory. For this reason, territories are relatively small.

Lions mark their territory by roaring. All members in the pride will roar together as a warning to neighbouring prides. This signals the range of their territory and how well defended it is. House alarms were based on the same principle. If someone breaks in, and the alarm will go off to demonstrate that there has been a violation of territory. Most birds are only territorial during mating times, and for the rest, they have the freedom to travel anywhere without a passport. Their homes are based on seasons and temperatures, which is kind of similar to when old people leave winter for a warmer season in Spain or somewhere else.

Most people would probably look at these examples and think, Oh my, we have so much in common with nature.

It is not that we have so much in common; it is simply just that we are nature. There is no boundary between anything anywhere.

Rewilding is not about going deep into the bush and living like the ancients or becoming an animal, but it is to honour and recognize the ancient knowledge that dwells in nature and find a way to learn and extract that knowledge so that we can apply it on modern challenges and reconnect people to the wildness and interconnectivity that ties us all together. If you ask, nature will answer. The nature in me will always be able to see the nature in you. There is no such thing as loneliness if we open our eyes to the ecosystem that we are all a part of. There is no such thing as a problem if we take responsibility and contribute to the greater collective.

Earth is home. Nature is home. I am home in me.