I think sometimes that we are homesick the most for the places we have never really known.

I had to go to West Hebron today to pick up a Christmas present for Maria, and I knew as I got closer that I had to drive down the road and see the Old Bedlam Farm, the first one. You can see it from Gardenworks, where I stopped. I have not been there since we sold the farm in October, there was too much emotion in it for me. I should have gone and welcomed the Smiths, who have cared for the place so conscientiously, and are just the kind of people I hoped would come and save it. They love the farm, and are caring for it well and faithfully.

That was what I hoped for, every day for four years. And it eventually came to pass.

Bedlam Farm sits up high above the town of Hebron, a Civil War-era farmhouse surrounded by beautiful old barns. The house is regal, it kind of lord’s it over the small down below, down in the valley.  It is a curious spot for a farm, there is little tillable land the house sits at the bottom of a steep hill. There were horrendous water problems there, the water just rushed down the hill, into the basement and into the wells. The Patterson family had cows and sheep there when the farm was first built.

It was a great place to learn and write, I wrote eight books there, including two children’s books. My books were best-sellers, people loved the idea of the farm, I was a shooting star, reporters came from all over to record the story of the city boy who fled his life for the country.

I holed up in a small East-facing room at one end of the farmhouse, light poured in from the tall windows in the living room, the room where family members were laid to rest when they died. In the Spring and Summer, I wrote on the screened-in porch overlooking the valley. In 2007, I started writing on my blog, I have not yet stopped.

I saw right away that the Smiths had painted the fences, fixed the paint and wood on the porch. The house looked sharp, it was grand to sit it looking so fit and loved. I rode quickly through the town, when I left nobody said goodbye, we just sort of fled. I never did know too many people there, I was too much of a mess.

The Smiths tell me they are graciously accepting the fact that people from all over the country sometimes drive or stop by to see the place they read about and think of me and the dogs. It is always an unnerving thing when people stop by to look at  your home, but it often happens there, even when we were gone. They all know exactly where Rose was when she moved the sheep in the blizzard.

I hope people don’t bother them, but I also know that these visitors are generally good and loving people.

When I first see Bedlam Farm, my heart lifts and races, it feels like a cross between a thrill and a fright. It sends a wave of feeling through me, and so much memory and emotion. I imagine its Adrenaline I’m feeling. The body is alarmed.

I think of Red first herding my sheep in the lower field, Rose and I crawling through the awful blizzards of that first winter. I think of lambing on that icy hill, of the movie crew rampaging through the farm in summer, the movie dogs eating Sardines in the barn. I think of sitting in that living room and talking about ending a 35-year marriage. I think of walking on that path, and falling in love with Maria in that studio.

I think of breaking down and going mad, of living mostly alone in that big and beautiful place for nearly six years, writing book after book as my life fell apart and came together again. I think of giving all of my money away, first to fix up the farmhouse and barns, then to give to someone I thought I could save.  Christ would have done that, a friend told me. I think I believed her.

Madness is a journey into terror and disillusion, my life seemed over, the only thing that kept me alive that awful winter of 2008 was counting the days, hours and minutes until Maria would show up in her ugly little toilet bowl of a car and have tea with me for five or ten minutes. When she left, I started counting down for another week. It kept me from running out naked into the snow and going to sleep.

I much loved walking up that hill behind the farmhouse and reading St. Augustine to the dogs. Rose and I walked the sheep through the woods for miles, even into town to mow the lawn of the Methodist Church, until we met some hungry Rottweilers and hastily retreated. I remember Jeff Bridges inviting me to lunch in my trailer, frustrated because he couldn’t understand my true motivation for being there. If I were up here alone, he told me, I would be a womanizer. If I looked like you, I said, I would be a womanizer too.

I can see where Orson is buried from the road, and where the shaman found dead spirits in the big barn. Such a rich and meaningful time, I am grateful for every moment of it, I am lucky to have lived it, even more fortunate to have survived it.

One day soon, I hope to visit the Smiths there and welcome them properly, have some tea, wish them well.  I hope they understand that I couldn’t do it,  I can do it now. It seems a very long time ago that I lived on that farm. Maria and I have built a new life together, we are making our own memories, experiencing new kinds of feelings. I am better now, I have worked hard to heal, and have more work still to do.

I think every place you are in is the right place for you to be. I am in the right place for me now, if I didn’t know how to live, I did know when to leave. I made too many mistakes there to count, but I will give myself credit for that.

In the end, the farm showed its own spirit and will, it defied everyone’s expectations of it and hung on until the right people showed up. The proud old farm was not about to be sold to those snotty New Yorkers who wanted a bathroom for every one of their four children, or the friendly man in the wheelchair from New Jersey who wanted to know where Rose slept, and then quietly slipped out the door and left without saying goodbye. Where did he go, asked the realtor?

He went  home, I said.

This was a good trip to Bedlam Farm, a milestone. Standing outside of the farmhouse, looking down the valley, my mind went off on it’s own and I stopped thinking about what happened there. I thought instead of Maria in her Studio, making her art, little Fate sitting by the window, waiting for me and Red to get back so we could work, I thought of my study and my eager computer, waiting for me to feed my hungry blog. I thought of the photos I wanted to take in the afternoon  light.

My heart had settled back down. I drove back through town, there was no one to wave to or visit.

And then, I thought, standing on that hill, looking over the farm where I lived so much life, that the past is like a candle flickering in the wind at a great distance. It is too far to warm me or give me light, too bright and beautiful for me to quit looking.

It was time to go home.