Post 1: The Return

 

It was 65 degrees when I stepped out onto the farm in Mercer, Tennessee. Not a cloud in the sky. The kind of late afternoon where the sun lingers just long enough to remind you it won’t be here forever. Birds were calling to one another across the open land, and for a moment, it felt like nothing had changed.

But everything had.

It was a little after 5 p.m., and the quiet hit differently than I remembered. Not empty. Not lonely. Just… still. The kind of stillness that doesn’t ask anything from you, but quietly invites you to notice it.

There was no movement from the neighboring property. No distant machinery. No voices. Just the land, breathing slowly under a soft sky.

I didn’t walk the whole 18 acres. I didn’t need to. My feet carried me toward what used to be the center of everything—the place where a house once stood, where a garage once echoed with the sounds of work, where life once gathered in predictable, meaningful patterns.

That’s the thing about land like this. You don’t have to see everything to remember everything.

I had been here before, many times. But this time felt different. This time, I wasn’t just visiting.

I was returning.

This is post one of a multi part series, reflections on the farm owned by my father and my grandfather. This is written for me and my siblings.