My main home is in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a college town in the

In the ledger of belonging, a simple declaration glows like a hearth-fire: “My main home is in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a college town in the Ozark Mountains. I live on the highest hill in a quiet cul-de-sac, surrounded by friends.” In these few lines, Ellen Gilchrist sets boundary stones around her life. She does not merely list coordinates; she names a covenant—place wedded to people, elevation wedded to perspective, stillness wedded to study. The sentence is a map, yes, but also a vow: to root the self where learning hums and mountains keep watch.

Mark how she starts with the anchor—main home—as if there may be other roofs and other beds, yet only one ground that answers her name. Then come the qualifiers like blessings: Fayetteville and Arkansas, the college town that keeps the wells of conversation full; the Ozark Mountains, old-boned and many-voiced, that lend her sentences their granite and green. Home here is not a hiding place; it is an observatory. To dwell on the highest hill is to confess a desire to see far and clearly, not to tower over but to be taught by horizons.

The quiet cul-de-sac speaks another wisdom: not isolation, but chosen calm. The ancients would say that a circle road keeps rage from rushing through; it is a figure of deliberation, where arrivals must mean to arrive. In such a street, mornings are not stampeded and evenings can ripen. And around this stillness, the final crown: friends. Without companions, a hill is only altitude; with them, it becomes a citadel of laughter and refuge. Thus her line marries geography to fellowship, as if to say: safety is a topography of souls as much as of slopes.

Consider a story to set beside her own. A young professor—call him Julian—moved from city clamor to a ridge above a small college town. He feared smallness, then found breadth: seminars that spilled onto porches, students who brought beans from gardens, elders who knew the weather by the ache in their hands. From the ridge he watched fog lay shawls across the valley and learned to pace his thought by the hills’ patience. His work thickened; his sentences unhurried. He, too, found a quiet cul-de-sac that did not mute the world but tuned it.

History offers an older mirror. When Thoreau set his cabin by Walden Pond, he chose not wilderness alone but nearness to a village whose bells and talk he could still hear. His “main home” was not the cabin, finally, but a way of keeping company with water, woods, and neighbors—each a teacher. So Gilchrist’s naming of Fayetteville in the Ozark Mountains echoes that discipline: live where ideas have roads to walk, where nature keeps counsel, where the circle of friends closes gently against the night.

What lesson, then, shall we pass down? First, that home worth the name is a triad: place, practice, and people. Seek a landscape that steadies you, a daily rhythm that renews you, and a circle that answers you back with kindness and truth. Second, that elevation is not vanity; the highest hill is a figure for perspective—choose vantage over spectacle, outlook over outcry. Third, that a college town is more than enrollments; it is a vow to keep learning until the last lamp is doused.

Let the counsel be plain and usable. Find your own main home by testing three questions: Does this ground enlarge my gratitude? Does this routine deepen my craft? Do these friends strengthen my courage? Build a small “quiet cul-de-sac” into your days—an hour without rushing, a table where conversation is unpriced. Climb—literally or figuratively—to a “highest hill” each week: a trail, a sanctuary, a library balcony—anywhere your sight grows long. And plant yourself near a living well of thought—a class, a reading group, a workshop—so your heart keeps apprentice to wonder. Do this, and your life will gather the same good architecture as Gilchrist’s line: a home that shelters, a horizon that teaches, and a circle of friends that keeps the fire bright against every wind.