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In Already Home, Barbara Gates shares her quest to find connection and meaning in her urban Berkeley, California home. Triggered by a diagnosis of breast cancer and the accompanying recognition of mortality, she follows an intuition that her own life is an expression of the changing terrain - a vast and ongoing exchange. In pursuit of this idea, she researches far-ranging facets of her surroundings: the geological history of the bay and hills, the history of her house and her neighborhood including the 4,500 years of a native American shellmound. As she learns the history of the terrain, she seeks out original shorelines, long since changed by landfill; original creeks that have been culverted and run into sewers; and diverse expressions of life now at risk from the exhalations of 21st-century industry and traffic.
Through the lens of Buddhism, Gates inspires readers to take on the
vast view of the evolution of the places where they live, to see into
the
heartache and grace of daily life - to find for themselves that any
moment
can open up to reveal that we are already home.