There's no place like home

This morning I was glancing through a book my friend had loaned me, and it had an exercise in which you were invited to mentally go to your favorite place in nature, and then think about what you hear, what you see, what you feel, what you smell...

... Which got me to thinking about what I love about this farm where I'm staying, and the countryside I've been driving through, and what I love about my own home on the other side of the country.

So I went downstairs to sit in one of those inviting rockers on the front porch, to bask in the morning sun and watch the mist rise over the fields.  The sun was warm despite the autumn chill, the dew on the grass was sparkling, and the air was thick with the sound of -- is it crickets? Katydids? Cicadas?  Not sure -- but it's a very pleasant hum that reminds me of my childhood.  There were birds, too -- crows and chicadees and some others I didn't recognize; no mourning doves -- but perhaps I'd come down too late to hear them. 

But through it all there was a steady stream of traffic noise -- large trucks, from the sound of it -- and I realized I was missing the sound of home: no trucks, no traffic, no cicadas; but the gentle lap of waves, and the cries of seagulls, herons, and canada geese mixed with the chicadees and crows.  There the mist rises over snow-capped mountains, and the Puget Sound -- not more beautiful, just... different. 

All of which tells me I'm ready to head home.  Which is a good thing, given that my flight will be leaving this afternoon.  It's been glorious here; the gentle rolling hills and red barns and white clapboard homes and subtle colors of early fall have fed my eyes, and the friendship and conversation, the sense of shared challenges and shared vision have fed my soul.  Each of these places is lovely, and I'll probably always feel at home in both, maybe even a little torn between the two.   And if there's a restlessness in me that's still unquenched despite my recent travels, well -- I'll just have to keep an eye on that, and listen to it, and see where it leads me next -- which might not be a place at all, but a new state of mind.  Guess I'll just have to wait and see!