I am buried and tangled with history. I was born on Cape Cod, as was my mother, her parents, their parents... a long line stretching all the way back to John Howland on the Mayflower. I have seen old family houses with their tiny, uneven windows and deeply slanted roofs, their thin walls and horse-hair plaster. I have heard stories, read old diaries, seen old pictures... and even the things I can not perceive still surround me in this place, silent and invisible but still present: a reminder of the thousands of lives I am connected to.
   This little cusp of sand in the corner of America has changed so much since then. At first wooded and silent, now trembling under too may mansions, golf courses, shopping malls, gas stations, and cars, cars, cars. I want to see the way the land looked before the Europeans arrived, when brave deer picked their way through ancient forests, when the sand was smooth and vastly unbroken, arching into the Atlantic as if to escape the continent itself.
    Sometimes, when I walk on the beach in the winter and turn my back to the land, when I can't see or hear another human, when the wide gray sky and the wide gray sea stretch on until they meet, I can see the reason we've stayed so long. We live on the edge of infinity.
    My father's family has lived in Indiana since Thomas Mumford came from England in 1828. The land there is so rich: insects, trees, tall grass; I love the way the sky is more alive, the way creeks are folded in between hills, and the long, long gravel driveway is lined with huge trees planted by the grandfather I never met. When I was younger, I thought those three thousand acres went on forever.
    I love the way stories are hidden in everything I can see, like that old stone horse-jump in the middle of a cow pasture, or a dusty plaque in the tack room with the name of some long-dead horse. And some stories are too old for even my grandmother to remember, like the graveyard in the woods, headstones naming dead infants from the 1800's all hidden by tall wildflowers that grow over tiny skeletons. And then there are stories even older, before my family, like the Indian shell-mounds in the woods, the stone arrowheads on the creek banks.
    I am surrounded by history and expectation- the road I walk is rutted so deep with thousands of footsteps that I can't see my surroundings. I am one more name in a vast family tree. But could I do what John Howland did? Could I uproot myself and walk away from my identity?
    I could travel everywhere until I found a place that suits me- a place where the sunlight comes in through the morning window pale and golden and falls at just the right angle into my teacup. A place that is quiet enough for my thoughts, but loud enough to listen to when I have none. A place with wide skies, ragged coasts, and moss-covered ruins. A place with warm water and silent beaches, snowy winters and brilliant stars. When I find that place, I will stay. I will have children, and they will have children, and someday I will be remembered as the woman who took a risk to find the place they call home.