Photo Essay: Coming Home With the Matador Community

05/28/10  Print This Post Print This Post    15 Comments   Popular   Written by Nick Rowlands
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We asked the Matador community to send in a photo and caption that encapsulated how they felt about “home”. Big thanks to everyone that submitted something!


Beach hut

1. Daniel Nahabedian: “Home” is just a roof I can rest under temporarily. I am not attached to any place, any country or location. It is more a base where I can put my belongings and come back to rest, and abandon easily to go and discover what should be considered our true Home: Earth.


Shopska salad

2. Sarah Menkedick: Home for me is 5 p.m. on a winter evening in Ohio. It smells sharp like woodsmoke and ice, and the light has a quiet, melancholy gentleness to it that makes you sense the whole of your life passing, so short. When I was in high school I used to stare out the back windows of our kitchen at this light in the winter and think about where I was going, about the life that lay ahead. I do the same thing now whenever I go home in December; find myself looking out the windows of my parents’ farmhouse and feeling the winter and the passing of time.


Ohio winter

3. Slava Bowman: Home means fresh, sun-kissed, home-grown colorful veggies cut up in a delicious, mouth-watering, towering feta-topped shopska salata! Mmmm…YUM!


The wisdom of a bottle of wine

4. Abby Leonard: Home means sitting on a porch, watching the sun set over the Sound, enjoying the wisdom that a bottle of wine brings out in friends and family. This photo was taken in Bellingham, Washington.


Hot sulphur springs along Colarado River

5. David Miller: This photo was taken at Hot Sulphur Springs along the Colorado River. Layla was looking at deer on the mountainside. We were essentially “homeless” during this time, Summer of 09, having left Seattle and basically just camping / traveling in Colorado. And yet this feels super “at home” to me. Just being together, experiencing places that Lau and I love and can now experience again for the first time with Layla. That’s what “home” means, I think: being in love with the places you find yourself and the people there with you.


Rebecca Kinsella and family

6. Rebecca Kinsella: For me, returning ‘home’ in 3 months means hanging out with my brothers and sister again after two years abroad.


The faded memory of home

7. Kendra Hoffman: Home is a faded memory: my mother’s garden lingers where I once danced with my sisters among the sunflowers, and my father’s woodshed looms behind it all. Only the winter speaks the truth: we all await rebirth.


Nancy Harder's dog scoping out her new home

8. Nancy Harder: Home is transitioning for us right now. Home is wherever my husband, James, and my dog, Zoey, are, which will be this house in Blacksburg, Virginia on May 30. In this pic, Zoey’s scoping out the new scene on the day we closed.


The aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy in the Philippines

9. Elga Reyes: This is home in the Philippines – but not until recently, not until Typhoon Ketsena (known locally as Typhoon Ondoy) hit my country, my hometown, all my loved ones hard. All my life I’ve only wanted to go away, to travel and experience the world, and never had I looked back and considered point zero. I am still a wanderer but now with an anchor, or better yet a return ticket to what truly counts, my family.


Kissing the globe

10. Soultravelers3: The world means home to our family as we’ve chosen an open-ended global tour lifestyle since 2006, and raised our trilingual child as a citizen of the world. Everywhere is our home and we are related to everyone! Home is where the heart is and our heart is everywhere! Home lives inside us and is the love that guides us, and which also is constantly reflected back to us by the beautiful people we meet and places we see.


At home with the Dogon tribe in Mali

11. Debra Lane: This is me experiencing “home” while with the Dogon Tribe in Mali, Africa.


Gypsy caravan parked next to the Taya River, Alaska

12.Lindsey T Rue: Home is a place that wraps me in comfort – where I can breathe, imagine, play and gather with good friends. I’m a perpetual traveler that changes locations with the seasons, and this photo is of my gypsy caravan parked along the banks of the Taya River, Alaska, in 2008.


Sandbar with a heart on in southern Utah

13.Scott Hartman: Hiking down the Escalante River in southern Utah, looking for a camp… found this sandbar with a heart on it… home IS where the heart is!


Home means snow and work

14.Jeff Bartlett: Hailing from the oil and gas town of Fort St John, located 1200 km north of Vancouver, home has always meant two things: snow and work.


The top of Tom Gates's fridge!

15.Tom Gates: Home means dreaming about being away. This is the top of my fridge, with a hand-sewn card from Laos and a blinding digital clock from Japan. They’re the first thing I see when I stumble towards a glass of water in the morning and I will inevitably grin when I see them, no matter how morning-grumbly I am.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What does home mean to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.


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About the Author

Matador ID: nickrowlands

Nick has lived in Egypt since 2006, and worked as a tour leader, an English teacher, and editor of a Cairo city guide. He’s a lapsed juggler and intermittent yoga practitioner, and isn’t so good at poker as he likes to think. You can follow his sun-crazed hallucinations on his blog, Delicious Chaos.

15 Comments... join the discussion!

  • Daniel N. replied on May 28, 2010

    Amazing essay Nick!
    I really loved how everyone considers home. And really liked that nobody actually just posted a photo of a house and said: “This is home”.

    Thanks for including me! Cheers!

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  • Hal Amen replied on May 28, 2010

    Very cool that so many people contributed. Great compilation, Nick.

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  • tom gates replied on May 28, 2010

    All of these hit me in a different way. Great to see so many perspectives.

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  • Candice Walsh replied on May 28, 2010

    Kendra Hoffman’s photo killed me a little. It made my heart ache.

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  • Sophie replied on May 29, 2010

    Agree with Candice. Somehow, it made me think of that 6-word-novel of Hemingway’s. “For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”
    On a cheerier note: Shopska – almost reason enough in itself to visit Bulgaria.
    And the first photo: the colours, the angle – just excellent!

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  • Nick Rowlands replied on May 29, 2010

    Agreed. It was fantastic to see so many different, varied perspectives on what “home” means to people, as well as so many great photos.

    Thanks again to everyone who contributed!

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  • Slava replied on May 29, 2010

    Thank you so much Nick for putting a great idea together! I really enjoyed the photo essay! :-)

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  • Anne replied on May 29, 2010

    Wow, it’s very cool to see so many different takes on the word “home.” It made me a little homesick. Also, I want to hang out in Slava’s kitchen…. yum.

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  • Nancy replied on May 29, 2010

    Great job putting this together Nick! What a great idea. I especially dig #2 & 15.

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  • Kaycie replied on May 29, 2010

    Lindsey! I’ll never forget when you made us all jump in the river… neked!!! Montana Dog-Walking the back trails near the Taya, hiking to Lower and Upper Lake, making friends of perfect strangers as they migrate to the fires at night to warm up and tell their stories, the bridge with The Unspoken Incident… the most exciting 6 months of my short 28 years, let me tell you!

    What a nice project, and all the photos are very well presented. ^_^

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  • soultravelers3 replied on May 30, 2010

    Love this photo essay, Nick! Thanks for including us. I particularly enjoyed the family oriented ones. Funny how travel and relocation can bring out more thoughts about what exactly home is!

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  • Debra Lane replied on May 30, 2010

    I just love the topic of home, and it was great to experience other perspectives. It doesn’t seem to matter where I go in this world- I’m always in that special space of comfort and familiarity. The reason I selected the photo of the Dogon elder and myself (#11) is because on the surface of things you couldn’t possibly pick two more disparate people; culturally, physically, you name it! And even without the benefit of conversation we looked into each others eyes and both felt our deep-rooted connection. I find that everywhere. And that is Home to me. Thank You Nick!

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  • Alaina O'Brien replied on May 31, 2010

    I can really identify with Sarah Menkedick’s photo and description, but I loved all of them!

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  • morgan replied on June 1, 2010

    Great article. I especially love that Nancy is living in Blacksburg, one of my favorite places in the world :)

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  • cna training replied on June 4, 2010

    Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article

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