By November, the sunrise is directly in front of my bedroom window. All summer, I watch it move south along the horizon, past the tree lines and ridges until it arrives right in front of Selma. Below it, fog settles into the fields. The old poplars in the front yard hold on to the last of their golden leaves. I have lived in this part of Virginia for most of my life and its beauty still gives me pause.

No matter where I travel, home has always been Virginia. More specifically, it's Lucketts, the little hamlet where I grew up and where I still wake up after all these years.
 
So much of what makes it home is wonderfully ordinary. The little tributary of Quarter Branch behind my childhood house, where we caught tadpoles and cooled our feet on summer days. Chapel Lane in Lost Corner, where my friend Thea lived. Gore Pond, just down the road from my son’s house at Chestnut Hill. These places hold the people and experiences that made them matter.
 
Lately, I’ve been trying to put them into paint

I’m working on a series of eight paintings for JD Miller, each depicting a piece of my life here. Working in the Reflectionist style, I build the paint into surfaces that catch light and cast shadows. I want to convey the feeling of being in these places, with all the memories that accompany the view.

My father taught me how to paint, which makes returning to these places on canvas especially meaningful. Something he gave me is helping me preserve pieces of the childhood we shared.
Restoring Selma came from that same attachment. Saving this house with Scott was a way to honor the county that raised me. From its windows, I look across fields, fencerows, and tree lines I knew as a girl. My family’s life continues across this familiar ground.

My books explore it, too. Places I traveled through as a child, a young adult, a mother, and now a grandmother reveal other lives through my research. Writing about them deepens my connection to a landscape I thought I already knew. 

There is something deeply moving about discovering how much happened in a place before you ever arrived. Perhaps that is why home continues to give me so much to write about, paint, and preserve. I know it intimately, yet it still has things to teach me.

This November, I’m grateful for that continuing discovery. Home has changed, and so have I. But there is still a sunrise to notice, a familiar road to follow, and someone I love waiting nearby. 

There’s no place I would rather belong.