Descriptive Essay About Home

Hello everyone! Welcome to our first meeting for the production of “A Solid Home”. I am very excited about what we can create together and I want us to be able to get started right away. For this production, our guiding concept is going to be “Death can be livelier than life.”

Approaching an unknown frontier, I was suddenly surrounded by sprawling foliage and vast forestry. In the midst of towering trees, I walked down a dirt path longing to find my individuality. The rustling of leaves warned predators of my oncoming approach. I reached the swampland, filled with new layers of fresh algae and marsh. The surface does not budge like a Venus flytrap, mouth open waiting for its next victim. However, the most interesting thought is the peace and quietness that is so long forgotten in today's urban sprawl of the twenty first century. With the constant rushing of one place to another, one forgets the elegance that comes with the solitude of being in one's own company. The buzzing of dragonflies and mosquitoes awoke me

Steaming black coffee warms my soul as I silently observe baby chipmunks running across the logs surrounding the driveway. Hummingbirds flutter and fuss over their feeder while other birds vie for seed in the log cabin. If I sit very still I might see a deer or bear from my perch on the porch. How pleasant it is to immerse in the quietness of the mountains far from the ever present clamor of civilization. In the mountains above Durango, Colorado, chill morning air greets me on this sixth day of retreat. Visiting my sister Janet’s “cabin” was not my choice. Yet, here I am. Only two vacation days remain and in the silence, I begin to reflect.

Down the street and around the crescent, by the dented stop sign, the third house on the left, the one with the loose brick by the chimney. The one with the black doors and the black roof and the dark bricks and the windows with a white trim- it looks like a distorted face staring at the empty space ahead. That’s my house. The one with the misshapen, nearly dead tree, that taps and scratches at the window when the wind blows, like a spirit warning me to escape while I still can. That’s my house. The house that gives people the chills when they walk by, the one people cross the street to avoid, and the one little children run by and tell stories about. The feeling we get can only be compared to the feeling we have when we drive by a graveyard. Sadness. Eeriness. Yes, that’s my house.

Living in a city can make you forget the outside world. You forget about the green grass, the trees, the chirping birds, the animals, and so many other things the world has to offer. We also forget the people who came before us, who did so much for us, who built everything we have today. We’re so busy doing stuff that is unimportant, that we forget about the stuff that is. Getting a house in Connecticut, made me realize all these things. It made me more in touch with nature and history. I got my country house about 8 years ago, and I think it changed me for the better.

When I was young, I would often dream of becoming a crewmate on a seaworthy vessel, battling high, intimidating and ferocious tides. Apart with having the maneuvering ability to go through tight nooks and crannies to explore uncharted waters. Part of this was due to my imagination, but a large influence was given by my house, which seemed like a fine boat itself. Surrounded by unconstructed houses which seemed like unmapped area, and numerous resemblances to pirate ships such as a flag flying off the balcony, my childhood home was the perfect place for a blooming imagination to run wild.

Home is something I didn’t even notice, or thought I’d miss, until I’d left for college. And then, I found myself longing for a home I hadn’t noticed was a home. Home feels warm, welcoming, like it should never be left. And yet, we have all left home. It used to be the middle roundtable with the four uncomfortable, a bit too large, chairs in the library. Between 11:10 and 11:40, everyday; home was lunch with my friends. Matt, on my right, and Clark on my left, scrambling to complete the homework due later that day. When I would nap, and my shoes would be stolen by Clark, only to wake up to find Matt had written quotes, not only onto the soles of them, but on my arms as well, in permanent marker. Home was the librarians fondly reprimanding Matt and me for eating in the library, yet still hating Clark for some inexplicable reason, or sneaking in without our school i.d.s, feeling so proud of ourselves when we didn’t have to sit outside. Aaron, relegated to the fourth, uneven chair, whenever he would occasionally visit, only for us to get into a long-standing argument over whether Gandalf or Dumbledore was more powerful, until Matt finally agreed with me, quoting the Silmarillion word for word. Which naturally progressed to quoting the movies at Aaron until he agreed, Clark confused and lost in the conversation. This inevitably led, to us lamenting about Clark not knowing any pop culture besides anime, then trying to boost his confidence, assuring he, out of any of us, wouldn’t

Pebbles fly as my Jeep takes a corner too fast, my body lurching to the left at the sudden force of the turn. I’m finally on Green, a quiet dirt road that stretches from Bennett Lake to Parshallville, a scenic detour I ride down that lets me clear my head. I’ve only lived in the area for two years, but those two years gave me something timeless--a home. My home isn’t some conventional house in the suburbs, although I did live in such a house, but it is the roads and the fields that webbed their way throughout and past my city, and the memories I make with others while on them. I glance at my sister Ken next to me; her right arm stretching lazily out of the window, the other scrolling the radio’s knob, attempting to find a worthy song to play. She’s only nineteen, with hair shorter and blonder than my own. Her presence soothes me, as if every pleasant memory we grew up making together was somehow brought back through each of her smiles. She is my closest friend; she not only provides the part of my home that allows me to be heard by someone who understands, but also the knowledge that we cherish the same home. I pull my attention away from her, watching the fields and houses quickly slip by. The few farmhouses we pass begin to fade until all that borders the road are giant trees, each tipping over us to create a canopy of leaves.

My eyes opened slowly and unexpectedly. I yawned and stretched my body out across my mattress, arms out reaching high above my head, getting the joints warm and flexible. I sat up on the bed and looked around the near pitch black space that was my bedroom. My eyes have yet to adjust to the darkness, but I knew where everything was, all committed to memory. My room forms the shape of an L; The door leading into my room opens up to a space five feet wide and it opens up to the rest of my room in a square shape. In the right-hand corner of the room lies my bed against the wall, jet-black sheets covering the bed that I currently sit on with matching pillowcases and a white fleece blanket that wasn’t covering me at the moment, so it was probably on the floor. Next to my bed was my desk, very large and made of redwood, with three drawers on its right side and one under where the middle of the desk was. In the corner opposite of me on the left side of my room was my bookshelf, filled to the brim with all sorts of books, each one I had a very strong fondness for, and on top of it a globe and a random mess of papers, journals and writing utensils that I use for schoolwork. Directly right to the bookshelf was the small wooden nightstand that my 22-inch flat screen TV sat atop, several of my favorite DVDs and video game cases on it as well and on the floor beneath the stand was my Playstation 4 console and my 2 controllers

One hundred miles could take me a long ways from home. I could end up in the big city down south, or I could choose to head north to the heartland of Minnesota. If I go just the right direction, one hundred miles will take me right back home. How could that be? There is a small place just south of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, that I consider to be my second home. I call it Bear Camp. It consists of a very rough and bumpy driveway that leads to a small opening in the woods. There is a small fire pit in the center of the campsite that has been overflowing with ashes for years. My family and I usually go there, along with some family friends, to get away. An outsider would think that it is just an open, overgrown prairie, but when we all visit, this place becomes our home.

When you step into my room, the first thing you will notice is the golden afternoon sunlight fluttering in and dancing around because of the large sycamore trees outside my window. The window is fairly large, as my house is a Cape Cod style home. The reason for the window being so large is that it is one of the primary dormer windows on the second floor that front the street. The window is also set in alcove that is approximately two feet deep, and is framed with white wooden shutters on both sides. I have always been a very optimistic and happy person, and this large window letting in the golden light of nature is a fantastic representation of my personality.

There is one thing that is common in most small, rural Southern towns; appliances on the porch. From deep-freezers to washing machines, if there’s not room in the house you can guarantee there is room on the porch and an extension cord long enough to plug it in. No one thinks it’s unusual as everyone in the neighborhood does it. That’s especially true for the humble, one-stop-light town I was brought up in. The house I lived in my entire childhood had a deep-freezer on the back porch; my second cousin, who lived next door, had a wringer washing machine on her front porch. That washing machine would lead to an incident involving a shotgun, scissors, a trip to the ER and a lifetime of jokes.

My entire life I lived in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. When I was about two years old, my family moved out into the country, a move that I don’t recall, but have seen pictures of. One of my favorite pictures from the move is of me sitting in a box full of white packing peanuts, smiling from ear to ear at the camera. The house we moved into in the Hammer Hills neighborhood was and still is what I consider my home. The first thing that people notice about our house isn’t even our house at all. It is the towering pine trees lined up in two long rows that run the length of our property line in front of our house. In total, there are approximately 24 pine trees. My parents decided to plant the rows of pine trees to act as a wind block to help with blowing and drifting snow in the winter. The only problem was that it would take several years for the trees to finally serve their purpose. When they were planted, they were only whips, as my parents call them, just a few inches tall and about the width of

The idea of home is a loose image for me, one that wobbles and threatens to be blown away at the lightest breath. Home will never be a singular place, as I’ve become familiar with too many walls, each a distinct color of beige that is friendly, but not inviting, like a stranger you greet briefly as you skirt around them on the sidewalk. Each house a place to hold the memories I’ve placed in objects, a shell against the cold wind of time that bites harshly at the thin jacket that objects offer to recollection. Houses are nothing more than a box that contains that which I hold dear. Old pictures taken with friends against the hazy background of a summer night 10 years ago, a snow globe from my mother’s business trip, a letter from my brother, all things I would consider to be childhood home above an actual house. Home isn’t a place, it’s an intangible thought that I hold sweetly in my head, one that reminds me of the good, the bad, and those who have touched me throughout my life.

Now that i’m actually thinking about the entirety of my childhood, it seems kind of crazy that i’m at the point where i’m at now. I remember when I was about nine years old, I thought to myself, “It will feel like forever until I start driving.” It’s crazy to think now that I’m only less than a month away from getting my license. And it feels like only yesterday that I was nine years old. Time seems like it really does fly sometimes.