Home

By Ryan Versaw

The Japanese home a installation art piece at a Covid themed art show cardboard home made

by: Havoc Age 8

Photo by: Kyle Davidson

A home is a place People have gone miles to find and walked even further to reach. People must seek a shelter to call their own. While the people bring bread and hold food to eat, you will see how we live. We do not live in houses. There is simply a home to call our own within the shelter of a house. Blood flows to the Child born and holds the family in place. Both blood and family keep a house that we will always have even if we constantly seek the home that is the place inside. A table contains our food above the ground so that we can eat. The hearth is the place in which the people keep the warmth that is fed by all that the inner Child is taught. With this warmth, we can feel and see. Our bed exists with us to keep our Child still long enough to heal from the inside. The home has a hearth, table, and bed to hold our Child's place.

While the people are pushed to seek shelter until we find a place to reside, in this Land of my home, some People continue to walk for miles to find shelter. Some of these people once lived in a house with many children and worked a job with hourly pay. Other people moved out of a house dwelled by mother and father to find their place to reside. People must eat and naturally seek a table even when a sleeping bag barely fits a pack with all of their food. The hearth is a flame that burns with the heart and head. All of our desire rests with the hearth, the fire, from which we hold all that teacher taught us, and we must find a place to heal that a bed or the earth has. While we only heal up high, where the people are, all people will seek the table, hearth, and bed that composes a home. The desire to be loved and how we love will compel us to seek home until we go higher.

Walking down the river, I met James Miller near the pavilion by the San Juan river. James once owned a home and worked an hourly job at a lumber mill. James, his wife, and Child lived with him until the day that he went on the road. A van was his only home, often filled with empty cans and wrappers in a constant rise to the world.

"I was just surprised to wake up every morning and still be the same person." said James.

  Following his days by the shore of a lake in his rolling home, James arrived in Pagosa. In his Land I call my own, James has sought a home. I show the way to the hill that has given many a place to stand for the night. Reservoir Hill has been here for all the people looking to put their feet in place to stand and breathe for a night until the sun rises to show more.

Under the gazebo, in downtown Pagosa Springs, stands Aaron Janson, who walks in the same direction toward the hill to hold all children seeking a home in Pagosa. Since Pagosa Springs was given an English name, Reservoir hill has encompassed shelter and a place to heal. Days later, I see Aaron sitting on a steel balcony with Amanda Morgan, who now lives outside until a prospective employer offers housing. I sit next to Aaron and listen to the story of his life. Currently, with family in the area, Aaron lives out here until his home has been found. For Aaron, the home has been a place to hold to his heart. Aaron moved out of the home of his family and into the house of a local preacher. For Aaron, life was a constant effort to hold his home and place in this world. As Aaron speaks, I hear him refer to his bond with the people around him.

"I knew I was different than most people and could not function," stated Aaron.

The warmth of a preacher's house came with the feeling of being still and belonging, and the  house of the preacher felt like an escape from caring about societal pressures. Upon moving out of the preacher’s house,  Aaron suffered, time spent riddled with digging in ashtrays and feeling darkness in his chest. Repeatedly, Aaron refers to the home of the preacher and his wife as a place where he belonged. The preacher's home was the only place in which Aaron had a bed and a table to accompany the warmth of his own. Even Aaron’s job as an electrician for aircraft in the navy yielded only another search for people to love.

"The military was full of sadness and anger," Aaron said.

After years of being with people that loved people more than their jobs, Aaron pulled loose of the bed that was his own. With family in the area, Aaron still lives with the town as his house, out here among the people to carry his bed.

In my home, many people have lived out of their households while still in school. For years people have lived from a backpack without a home to stink in as people do. Up here in the mountains, above the stag of downtown, these people lived good lives. People gather near the river with packs loaded while waiting to be raised to the mountains and live a good life. All are looking for a hearth to keep warm with knowledge and a table to call their own. The people of Pagosa Springs bed will be found once they are fed. If ever you find yourself in pain while looking for your home, know that you are here with me, and so I love you. I am Man. 

*Ryan Versaw*