Running Home

I am finally home, and the adrenaline that coursed through my veins a few days after we escaped has left. I cut myself with a razor, shaving my legs tonight, and I’m thinking about what I deserve, what I owe. I have the privilege to run away from scary situations with unidentified cult-like leaders and go to a house that I don’t pay for with running water and heat. I stand in the heat, and I get to feel better. I think everyone deserves that, the luxury of softness. The safety that comes with warm water and a home.

So, I wonder why we chose to leave.

My roommate, Avery, and I had booked a farm experience months ago. When the craziness at school had really come to a head, we’d turn to each other and say Soon we’ll be on the farm. We were craving an escape, a drastic one. So, we packed my car with purpose, turned on my meticulously curated two-hour playlist, and drove the two and a half hours to the farm. I was taking everything as a sign as the roads got smaller and smaller and more remote. Pointing out the 222 and hoping for clarity. I wanted to unearth something from myself. Something more, something better. Instead, I found that I had everything I needed right in front of me.

11/17/2025

4:00 pm

I made it to the farm. It seems beautiful. Josephine (my car) made it up the bumpy roads, and I feel more in touch with the silence than I was before. I hope this will be good. Driving on the roads out with the dead grass and rolling hills, I got the closest I’ve ever been to nothing. But really, it’s just hibernation. It’s funny how nature tricks you like that. The world goes round, and spring comes, and then sprigs of green come in. We’re staying in bunk beds next to a stream that runs loud enough to hear. I think the first sense I’m getting back out here is sound. As I drove further into the wilderness, I drove so slowly that I could hear the crackling leaves. When I peed on our pee tree, I could hear it too. I can even hear the silence in between breaths. I’m glad Avery is here with me. I hope I learn a lot.

7:30 pm

Are recovery and art the same? What am I recovering from? The act of always being attached, I think. Out here in the middle of nowhere, I am trying not to be attached. There’s one other girl out here on the farm. We’ll call her Ramona; she’s been out here for a month and seems perfectly content to be unattached to anything. I think there’s something false in that. How can you live in the world and not be attached? It’s nighttime, and we made food over the fire. I miss Tegan, but I’m not letting it derail my whole life. I’m going to try and get centered and focus on the task at hand tomorrow. It’s only 7:30, but I feel tired. I think this will be good for me to detach. I am so happy to be attached to all of it, but I’m taking some time to find out what attachments are good and which are bad. So far, the characters on the farm are Doris and Ramona, whom I mentioned (I changed their names for the privacy of myself and them). And then Arlo the dog. Doris is unique, a 70-year-old woman who’s been off-grid for thirty years. She’s somewhat short and shriveled, and she seems to care a lot about what she’s doing. She kind of scares me. Ramona is cool, very sweet with a pixie cut and glasses that dangle from a chain. She never really talks about herself. Neither does Doris. Arlo is furry and white and followed us back to the cabin tonight. He peed with me in the dark.

11/18/2025

7:00 am

I have maybe like five layers on. The air is so cold, and at this point, I miss civilization. I miss the warmth of the air and friends.

1:00 pm

I’m feeling aggressively happy about my life back at home. I know exactly what I want, and I’m proud of that. I know I want to live in a city with people and never get bored. Here it is quiet and calm, which I do like. Our job this morning was to cut away the leaves that died from the frost. It is clear that this farm is slowly dying, rotting from the inside. Ironically, I’m cutting away the dead while feeling very alive. I feel lucky to be around the people in my life whom I love. I don’t know if detaching from everything is the answer. It seems to lend itself to loss of life. As we cut away the dead leaves by ourselves, all I can think about is life outside the farm. I find myself wondering what Doris and Ramona are thinking about. Being present in nature is a beautiful thing, but after a while you get to thinking. When I get back to civilization, I’m going to volunteer more. And call my mom and friends. I suppose that’s what happens when you go away, you come back with a lot of gratitude.

3:00 pm

This trip is devolving quickly. How does one curb a sense of dread?

7:30 pm

I am writing with my headlamp on. We are leaving on Thursday. Avery can’t be here, and really neither can I. We ate chili by candlelight, and Doris told us how she’d always wanted to start a cult, citing her book on mesmerism. I felt trapped in those four walls and the “off the grid” lifestyle everyone seems to covet. Doris seems to exist with the idea that she’s removed from all of it, when everyone here, on this earth, exists within this. This place feels very much like I felt my first year of college, with the seclusion and the trees. I understand more why I couldn’t handle being thrust into such solitude. Here, I would deal. I’m very good at finding reasons to be. But I know that this place doesn’t feel right, and other people need me. I have a feeling that I’m missing things on the outside, that I need to be home, if only to help everyone else. I’ll go insane all the same anywhere. Isn’t that the cost of living? The quiet out here is only a mirage. Doris is stressed about maintaining the farm, and even though she needs us, she also doesn’t want us here. Her way of living pushes everything else out, and I don’t want to push everything out. I’m realizing that I want the warmth of other people, the connection of touch. I deserve the beautiful things that come with life, and so does everyone. I wonder what made Doris think she doesn’t. We’ve decided to come up with a lie and leave on the 20th. We’ll pretend I got service the day of the market, and my mom needs me to drive home. It feels horrible to lie, but I think it’d feel more horrible to stay here in this isolation for another week.

11/19/2025

7:00 am

The whole world is hibernating, and I am not. This happens in the winter. I can feel the farm slowing down, Doris too. It’s a strange feeling to watch someone grow old, to watch someone lose something they once coveted. I suppose it happens all the time. We plan to lie to Doris, which I do feel bad about. Here on the farm, it feels like there’s nothing else but her and the way she does things. She does feel like some ambivalent cult-ish leader. I feel smaller here, like I only exist to do the work. We only have one more day under her thumb.

12:00 pm

Did market prep today, my head hurts. We bundled mint and lettuce, and green onion, and I thought how beautiful this would be if there was a sense of community and joy. I don’t know why I feel the need to be detached. I’m thinking about all the people I love who I’ll get to see so soon. Our lives are so beautiful. I think we wanted to leave when they weren’t, and now that they are, I feel I’ve lost something. There’s a lot of beauty here, too, but also a lot of fear. Doris is scared of getting old. She’ll be all alone; I’d be scared, too. Ramona’s scared of entering life, of really becoming part of this world. There’s something in the wilderness that unearths everyone’s fears. We’re all seen through the scope of what we have lost, what we could lose.

7:00 pm

I live with the inevitable dread that someday I will lose all the things I care about. But here it has somewhat happened, and I have lived.

This trip, I lied to an old lady to escape the woods, bought two records and a slice of pizza with newfound freedom, and some honey from a man who told me to go to the Indian burial grounds. I didn’t, but I did see God for a second. In the blurry, second light where sunset blurs into dusk. I followed Avery’s feet up the hill and down, chasing the raw pink of the sun and her steps. We decided to do one last trail before we left. We came looking for salvation, but instead we found each other again and again. Solace in the making, salvation in the work it takes to love somebody and let it last. Out here in the woods, there is no love, there is only solitude. We brought heaps of hope and this conscious want to find ourselves, and I suppose I did a little bit. There’s a scary feeling that comes from being this far in the woods. It’s the same feeling you get when you get too deep in the ocean, and all around you is just blue, and you start thinking you shouldn’t be there. There’s a sense of hesitation with unknown paths that everyone has to conquer, but in the woods, there’s a feeling that, amidst the fog and the animal sounds, you’re just a visitor, and this is not your home.

We were merely visitors, eager to try on new paths, and soon we will be home again.

11/20/2025

6:30 am

We’re now leaving the cabin. Last night I tossed and turned with nightmares that Doris and Ramona came at us with pitchforks to stay. I’m convincing myself that Doris stopped the sun from coming up. How does one not become a little bit god-like in a place like this? We are waiting for sunrise so I can drive that bumpy road one last time. I hope it comes soon.

9:00 am

We stopped at a Waffle House with 444 outside it, and the coffee felt somewhat holy. Driving up the road, we were shocked to find Doris had blocked us in. Her truck was turned sideways on the one driving path, and we had to off-road and drive through slivers of gaps in the walking path to make it out. I’m not sure if she purposefully wanted to keep us here or just forgot when we were leaving. Either way, driving through the fog three miles back to power, cellular, and connection felt frightening. I could feel my shoulders tense as I narrowed my eyes and hoped my car didn’t pop a tire. But we made it out, and now we’ll drive the four hours to Avery’s parents’ cabin. Soon we will be home again.

9:00 pm

I have gone crazy and found sanity in the Georgia mountains. I think that was perhaps the reason for the trip. It feels like the farm was so long, but time has its way of tricking you. The waking, working, and long, frightening nights were only three days. I am tired now, half-asleep, and glad for the people I called to say I lived to tell the tale.

We cut back the dead plants as we watched the farm rot. Unwilling to be part of the harvest, we ran. We are bright and full of light, unable to be snipped, evergreen. I am realizing now that all the things we needed to know we found out here, in the roundabout way that comes from running away from what we thought we wanted. We were reminded that our lives at home are so vibrant and bright, and how lucky we are to exist with this hope for the future, to exist without the need to run away.