There is a scene in Gone With the Wind that has always spoken to my heart.

Katie Scarlett O’Hara stands with the dirt of Tara in her hands and she pledges her heart to the power of her place.

The pictures above have long been my Tara. They are bunkhouses where I learned to savor rainy days, play the guitar, and cultivate friendship. The one on top was part of my family’s cabin. My sister and I slept there. The one below is my friend Mary’s place.

Three years ago I sold our family cabin. The sense of soul-shift has been seismic.

On Sunday I went home again. I stayed with my cabin neighbors.

I slept under the big white pines and I immersed myself in the lake that has watered my heart for so many years.

Most powerfully, I was in the company of family.

The women who presided over the cabins on either side of mine are in their nineties. We gathered together, the matriarchs and the next generations, and we sat and laughed and spoke the stories and adventures and the love of place and people and dogs and my heart grew so very large because the truth was palpable:

It was never about owning the land.

It has always been about the weaving of life and love and the mundane and precious sharing of a story that is even yet being written.

That place of my heart is mine forever.

As God is my witness.

And She is.