There is nothing like travel to remind you what it feels like to come home. But it also gets me thinking about what “home” provides. Just what makes home, home?

Is it the comfort of my own bed, that I have perfected over many years? Is it my kitchen, with all the ingredients and tools I need to whip up a snack or a meal? (Travel certainly makes me appreciate that!) Is it my people, with their loud laughter and constant interruptions to my workflow? (I couldn’t believe how much I got done one day when they were all at work, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.)

Or is it my community—the local farmers at the markets, the small-business owners and their employees who always seem happy to see me, the friends I have made along the way who always manage to have a minute to reconnect?

As the stories came in for this issue, the winter edition, I noticed that our accidental theme was twofold. The first was the importance of touching the ground. “Go touch grass!” is a newish phrase that Gen Z says to their peers when they see someone disconnected from reality, too attached to their phone, or too invested in online life. The implication is that touching grass—or connecting with nature—can bring you back to yourself when you might be feeling a little lost. In the following pages, we see that reflected: in our profile of a forest bathing guide, in the beautifully and humorously illustrated personal essay about digging in the dirt and in our story about Mama Tree, a regenerative farm in Upper Ojai.

The second accidental theme feels in some ways to be the opposite. Between food insecurity (see story and the rising costs of, well, everything for restaurants, we can see the economic impact of our current climate. And it doesn’t look good.

But that brings me back to this idea of home. What if home really is, as quoted above, where you find the light? Isn’t it this community that offers hope with food pantries and volunteers at organizations like Food Share and Food Forward? Isn’t it our neighbors showing up when they hear of a struggling small business? And isn’t it touching grass that brings it all back to the simplicity of connection?

Perhaps it is as Swedish writer Henning Mankell said: “You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.”

In this season of darkness, may we be the roots, and the home, for those who need it.

Tami