This essay was originally published in September 2022. Make sure you read Part One first!

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When we landed at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Flagstaff, we’d been traveling almost nonstop for four days, driving just under 2,000 miles.

Reflection questions:

* Hypothetical question: if someone offered you a million dollars to quit your job for a year and work as a tractor-trailer operator, would you do it?

* What are the scariest roads you’ve ever driven on and why?

* How has a long road trip changed your sense of self? (No matter how short or how long, the road changes us. Leave a comment)!

Image: My setup in the truck.

This essay was originally published in August 2022. I’m resharing my earliest pieces for those who subscribed recently, and I’ve recorded a voiceover for you to listen to it through your podcast app if you’d like. To do so, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable, web-friendly version at ashleighellskells.substack.com, where all my other essays and podcasts live. You can request to follow me on Facebook here and Instagram here, and I’m happy to hear from you at [email protected].

It’s not too far of a stretch in a newsletter on the topic of “home” to write about moving from one home to another.

Image: The Truck, the car, the sky, the clouds, somewhere off I-40 on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.

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For the January 2025 The State of Home: Year Three, click here. And if you’re a subscriber who joined this year, don’t forget to check out my introductory essay, Welcome Home, here. Otherwise, there’s no particular order in which these need to be read (or listened to), so go for it!

If you’d rather listen to this essay in a browser or as a podcast, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable, web-friendly version at ashleighellskells.substack.com, where all my other essays and podcasts live. You can request to follow me on Facebook here and Instagram here, and I’m happy to hear from you at [email protected].

What is home to a monster, to anyone? There exists for each of us a geographical fulcrum, a place so saturated with memory, that within its precinct the past is always present.

—Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors (Book 3 in The Passage Trilogy)

Happy New Year. My wish for 2026 is the same as it was for 2025: Times are weird and awful, but life is still beautiful. Find the things that make you happy and do them. Your joy will absolutely make the world better.

Image: Front door view, stunning sunset, May 2025. No filter necessary.

For some context, check out Gone to Carolina in my Mind from November 2024.

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For all the years I spent as a camper and summer staffer and year-round staff member at camps, I’ve hardly written much about them, outside of my own personal journals or reflections. Anyone who loves camp knows: experiencing one week of camp is like living through an entire year. Capturing any of it feels nearly impossible.

Reflection Questions

* Have you ever gone back to a home that’s changed? What memories did you have to unpack? Was the change better, worse, or neutral?

* Is place meaningless aside from the people who make it meaningful? Or does magic actually happen in some places more than others?

Image: Sunrise over Lake Lewthorne and Lakeside Lodge, Lutheridge, November 2025.

This essay was originally published in May 2022.

I’m resharing my earliest pieces for those who subscribed recently, and I’ve recorded a voiceover for you to listen to it through your podcast app if you’d like. To do so, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable, web-friendly version at ashleighellskells.substack.com, where all my other essays and podcasts live. You can request to follow me on Facebook here and Instagram here, and I’m happy to hear from you at [email protected].

The hickory tree in the front yard was dying. 

Little stairsteps of fungus had sprung up, pulsing out of the roots and pushing through the pine straw at the base of the tree. The shelf mushrooms clustered all along the north side, spiraling around the trunk like a spine. Within a year of first noticing it, the invaders had already multiplied.

It was a large, mature tree (my guess is it was at least 80 years old, though may have been far older), giving shade to the whole front side of the house, including my corner room upstairs. Each year, we collected the hickory nuts, shelled, and ate them. We’d do a sort of harvest exchange with my grandmother (while her teeth could still tolerate nuts); we’d give her the nuts from our yard and she would share the bounty of scuppernongs (muscadine grapes) from the vine in hers. 

This beautiful, bountiful hickory, standing tall in all the images of our home, had been a part of our lives for the entire time we’d lived there. Now both of these truths were coming to an end.

The death of this tree is not a metaphor for a household in decay, the seemingly healthy chlorophyllic canopy cloaking the rottenness festering inside. You won’t find a whole lot of dark secrets here; there was plenty of delight and joy and love in our home. Even with the expected misstep every once in a while (we’re all human), it was about as rosy a family life as one might hope for. So, in this case, a tree is just a tree.

But it means something now that it’s gone. Because we’re gone, too.

If I’m writing a newsletter about home, I should probably go back to the start.

Image: The last photo of my family in front of the house, Fall 2019.

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If you’d rather listen to this essay in a browser or as a podcast, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable, web-friendly version at ashleighellskells.substack.com, where all my other essays and podcasts live. You can request to follow me on Facebook here and Instagram here, and I’m happy to hear from you at [email protected].

It’s October, and fall has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Like a lot of places I’ve lived, September is a late summer month, a bridge month, and it’s lovely, but by the end of it I’m ready for a chill in the air, apple cinnamon things, and that unsettled feeling that comes from the knowledge that hauntings are gonna happen for one month only and I better be ready.

Reflection Questions:

* What’s your favorite scary movie?

* Has anything strange or supernatural happened to you or someone you know? What did you think of it?

* Are you afraid of clowns? (You must submit a three-page essay, single-spaced, with at least four arguments proving your point, and you will be graded on grammar, humor, and believability).

Image: me and my cousin Ryan, Trick-or-Treating, c. 1985. Photo by Grandmother.

This essay was originally published in March 2022. It’s back-to-school time, so we’re heading back to Fall 1997 when I first started college.

I’m resharing my earliest pieces for those who subscribed recently, and I’ve recorded a voiceover for you to listen to it through your podcast app if you’d like. To do so, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable, web-friendly version at ashleighellskells.substack.com, where all my other essays and podcasts live. You can request to follow me on Facebook here and Instagram here, and I’m happy to hear from you at [email protected].

Please be advised: in this essay exploring homesickness, there is an encounter with a friend who briefly describes her sexual assault.

Reflection questions:

* What do you remember about your first semester of college (if you did not attend college, what do you remember about being 18 years old)?

* Have you ever felt homesick in a way that surprised you? How did you cope with this uncomfortable feeling, and did something good (or bad) come out of it?

* When does a place truly feel like home?

Image: Photos from my freshman year album.

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If you’d rather listen to this essay in a browser or as a podcast, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

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And if you want to read more about life at Wake Forest University in the late nineties, you can check out my essay Bostwick 108 A: Margarita Hall.

The beach is for those moments that can only happen once; those sunsets, those storms, those vacation memories that get all fuzzy around the edges when you think of them because they’re from so long ago but they still buzz with the joy you felt when you were actually there and living them.

It was May 1998, the end of my freshman year of college, and I joined my Kappa Delta sisters and classmates at North Myrtle Beach (aka Paradise) for a week (or four days) of carousing and together time, all in our own little world. The center of that universe was a very special motel on Ocean Boulevard called The Helms.

Reflection questions:

* If you could only choose five things to have at your dream vacation, what would they be? (Post-Exams 1998 for me: friends, sunshine, late nights, the ocean, and probably seafood)

* What are those short-lived times in your life that became “peak memories” for you? How do you feel when you remember them now?

North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is home to many tribes and nations, including the Chicora, Waccamaw, Catawba, Lumbee, and Cape Fear.

Title Image: Looking south from the beach in front of the Helms. Photo by me.

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Myrtle. Folly. Pawleys Island. Edisto. Garden City. Litchfield. Hilton Head. Isle of Palms. Murrells Inlet. Fripp Island. Seabrook Island. These are all beaches and coastal towns I’ve spent days and days at, some again and again.

Reflection Questions:

* Where were the vacations you took as a child? What made them special?

* Were you a car trip family, a plane trip family, or a staycation family? Looking back, do you think these vacations reflected your family’s financial status?

* Where’s your beach (or mountain, or lake, etc.)? What is its name and why is it meaningful to you?

The coast of South Carolina is home to many tribes and nations, including the Chicora, Pee Dee, Sewee, Kusso, Waccamaw, Winyah, and Catawba.

All photos by me or family members.

This essay was originally published in February 2022. It has now been five years since the events I wrote about here.

I’m resharing my earliest pieces for those who subscribed recently, and I’ve recorded a voiceover for you to listen to it through your podcast app if you’d like. To do so, click the audio voiceover (“listen to post”) above. Read this if you need instructions on how to listen to episodes on your podcast app.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable, web-friendly version at ashleighellskells.substack.com, where all my other essays and podcasts live. You can request to follow me on Facebook here and Instagram here, and I’m happy to hear from you at [email protected].

Everyone has a pandemic story now (as well we should!): Where were you when? And what happened after?

Telling that story, even over and over, can play an important part in coming to terms with the world we’re (still) living in.

Mine revolves around a couple of square miles in the rolling hills north of Athens, Georgia. While Covid wasn’t the reason for the brevity of our stint in the Peach State, it was responsible for almost everything that happened during the second half of our year there.

Reflection questions:

* What do you love (or not) about your neighborhood? Were you stuck there during the first months of the pandemic, and what was it like?

* Do you trust yourself when you have to make a big decision, or do you constantly question whether you made the right choice?

Rocky Drive is located in present day Clarke County, Georgia, on the land of the Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee, East), S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), and Mvskoke (Muscogee/Creek) nations.

Image: Hairy balls milkweed.

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