Along the banks of the Missouri River, not far from Fort Benton, Montana, is the land where my mother’s parents homesteaded. The place is not far from where their parents settled after moving west. The farm has seen five generations of our family live on and work the land. It is a home place, but it is not my home place. My family came from that place. My mother was one of five daughters. Four of those daughters lived their lives win Montana. One moved away, lived in Washington, DC for much of her life and retired to Florida, where her son and his family still live.

On my father’s side, if you follow my family tree, it is hard to find any place where our people stayed for more than a couple of generations. My father was born on the farm where his father was born, but neither of them stayed on the place. Both drifted west and my father’s siblings continued to move farther west.

For much of my life I considered the town where I was born to be my hometown, but I only lived in that place until I was 17 years old. We raised our children in three different states, moving from place to place as the spirt and the church called us. The longest I lived in any single place was 25 years in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Those hills still feel like home to me and I have many friends and many fond memories of our time there. But we no longer live in that place. This home where we find ourselves, tucked into the corner of the country, almost on the Pacific Ocean and almost to Canada, has been ours for less than a year. I enjoy this place. I am delighted to live close to our grandchildren. I call it home. But I know that I am a newcomer and not a native.

Years ago, we were assigned the task of making photographs of home place for a class. Our teacher, Archie Lieberman, had been photographing the same farm home for much of his career. Though he traveled as a professional photographer for Life Magazine, he kept returning to the same family on the same farm to make more photographs. I struggled with the assignment. I was living temporarily as a student in Chicago, and I was homesick for Montana, where I had grown up. At that time I did not know that I would never again live in Montana. I thought that I would return to Montana upon graduation to live the rest of my life. When I thought of home place, I thought of the Crazy Mountains and the Boulder River and the high country of the Absaroka-Beartooth. I wanted to take pictures of waterfalls and pine trees and sunsets. But I was living in a tiny efficiency apartment on the south side of Chicago and I had only a week to complete my assignment. I ended up taking pictures of our apartment and feeling disappointed with my work. Each week we would prepare a gallery of our assignments, hanging our matted photographs next to those of other students in the class. One photograph stood out in that week’s display. It was made by another teacher and friend of mine, Ross Snyder. His photograph of “home place” was a stark black and white photograph of a pair of well-worn shoes.

I have thought ever since that being at home in my own shoes is one of the goals of my life.

The stories of our people are stories of leaving home and setting forth to new places. Abraham and Sarah left behind the country of their forebears to journey to the place God would show them. They did not realize that their journey would require that generations of our people become wanderers. Three generations later, our people were still wandering and found themselves enslaved in Egypt, a place where they lived that never became home. Leaving Egypt did not mean getting to their home. Another generation passed as our people wandered. And even when they did enter the promised land, it was theirs for only a little while. Our stories are stories of exile and diaspora.

Along the way, some of our people have learned to be at home in their own shoes.

Down by the bay, where we often walk, there is an eagle nest high in a tree. We love to watch the eagles as they bring more sticks and material to enhance their nest this year. We are anticipating seeing eaglets become fledglings this spring and summer. Eagles return to the same nest year after year, but not to the nest where they were hatched. Part of the process of reproduction is a process of seeking new nests - new homes.

We have come to a new nest, in a new place. It is not new to everyone. The Coast Salish people have lived here since time immemorial. And they have welcomed, with more or less tension, newcomers who have drifted to this place. Those who are indigenous are a minority. Most of us are more nomadic. Like the eagles, we have made a home in this place. The eagles will return to the nest year after year until it is one day taken over by a new generation. And years from then the tree will become old and the winds will break its branches and a new place will need to be found. Our homes are ours for only a little while. We are their stewards for a brief amount of time.

Many of my teachers have now come to the ends of their lives. We have become the old folks and have seen the birth of new generations. Yesterday I spent most of an hour rocking our infant grandson. He has no sense of the passage of time or of different places. He is secure in the house where he was born for now. I wonder what places he will travel and what he will see in his life.

Wherever life takes him, I hope he will learn to be at home in his own shoes.