“WATERSMEET” …. MY QUERENCIA
In Spanish, querencia describes a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home. It comes from the verb quere, which means “to desire” , “to want”.
Animals have querencia by instinct. The golden plover knows every year where to fly when it migrates. Rattlesnakes know by the temperature when to lie dormant. In winter, sparrows and chickadees know where their food is and they return to the same spot again and again. Humans have querencia, too. Our bodies tell us instinctively where we feel most at home.
My Querencia is “Watersmeet,”… a simple, but cozy house with channel rustic siding which sits where two streams converge in the Western hills of North Carolina. The name was first suggested by a friend from Tasmania and later a visitor from Ireland stood in the water and sang an Irish song called “The Meeting of the Waters.”
Tall willows line the riverbank. I remember well when they were just sticks, planted there 40 years ago by my daddy. (“I don’t see how those will ever be tress,” said my mother, “but your daddy usually knows what he’s doing.”) Over the years the water has changed things, digging a little deeper here, reforming a bank there…moving, always moving … like the lives of us who live and work and play here.
The season of my delight is summer, because I love open windows and porches, and the sound of the water. Even the tap water here is refreshing as is runs cool from the well. A large deck and an enclosed side porch are my newest additions. They are my favorite places to be in summer. The willows’ limbs droop… providing green curtains with their leafy branches. Their leaves move in the breeze and glisten in summer rain. The sound of rippling water gently breaks the silence.
There is a rather neglected flower bed next to the house, but all kinds of little asters and even golden rod come up to transform it from time to time. It is a favorite spot for the butterflies and birds.
Inside on the coffee table is the old guest book with a flowered cover. It is filled with stories of kids (who are now 40 years old) in the creek, spring snows, catching crawdads, popping touch-me-nots, church retreats, rock throwing, music making, romantic getaways, anniversary and birthday celebrations, a recipe for cornbread salad, an autograph from Eric Carle, a four leaf clover, children’s drawings of houses with shiny suns and a sad story about the death of a favorite dog, Hondo.
This is my Querencia…a refreshing retreat, a gathering place, a blueprint of memory.