What is Home?

This family in Tibet travels with nomadic groups made up of several families. Following migratory rules determined by their herds, they might move ten times during the summer and fall grazing seasons. Each family lives in a yak skin tent that is passed from one generation to the next. The tents are mobile shelters and especially important to maintain before and in winter, when camping at altitudes up to 15,000 feet, they endure plunging temperatures, abundant snow, and winds that blow with life-threatening ferocity.

As a humanitarian photographer and public speaker, I am also nomadic. Traveling tens of thousands of miles each year, I trace the roots of that yen to voyage afar to my childhood. When I was a young girl, I’d go the phone book and look up the addresses of embassies in distant lands. I’d write letters to them asking for brochures and maps. Maps of places in Chile, China, India, Africa, Tibet and eventually, from well over 75 countries in the world arrived. A second memory I hold dear is of going to the airport, not to actually travel as money was scarce, but just to hear foreign languages spoken. Even if I didn’t understand what people were saying, I was fascinated.

To this day, I often listen to music sung in languages I do not speak or understand. The sound washes over me and I am transported. I experience the comfort felt in my home in California, which is my sanctuary. It is aesthetically beautiful, ordered, cared for, and lived in with the family I cherish. In my mind, I am untethered—as are these nomadic people—of limited ideas of home. A home is an enclave, a place to drop pretense, an invaluable gift made universal when there is mutual respect, love, peace, curiosity, and unity.