Home

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm now officially smack-dab in the middle of my thirties, and to be honest, it feels pretty darn good. But you know what feels best of all?

Finally, finally--after seven years of living in WA, seven years of feeling like a fish perpetually out of water, finally ...

This place? The trees, the funky artist types, the camping, the coffee, the independent spirit?

It's home.

A revelation, no less. It may not seem quite worthy of blog time to those of you who have bloomed where you're planted all along. But to those of us who've endured, struggled, and tried to cope when everything seems somehow less than what it should be ... the realization that a place has worked its way into the soft spots of your heart is nothing less than the spiritual equivalent of a banana split. With a cherry on top, even.

WA is home. It feels right. The rain, the bookstores, the sight of salmon catapulting themselves from streams. The towns that pop up out of nowhere as you round a bend in the highway. The mountains that never shed their snowy caps. The beaches that are more rock than sand. Even the air just feels right.

I wonder how long it will take me to fall in love with Nepal. :-)