Home is where your heart is

Last week I made the long sojourn to the U.S. for Thanksgiving via São Paulo and Mexico City and finally to Mexicali where my folks picked me up.

It's funny because my home has always been in Wyoming in the same red house on the top of the hill on the north side of town. In my mind, it is a fixed, immutable space where I could imagine sitting at the kitchen table or counter drinking coffee in the morning, watching the occasional cow or horse approach the back fence, listening to birds chirp, or, very rarely, see a squirrel be chased up a tree by whichever lucky mutt was part of the family. The familiar. The routine. Memories stacking up one against another of the brown cabinets and sitting clad in robes to read the paper or watch the morning news. This is not romanticized. This is the fabric of the every day home to which I have returned from every corner of the earth. The richness of the fabric was not in its presentation but in its details, the little frog figurine that hung from the bar stool counter top, the mismash of coffee mugs in the cupboard, the treasures in the junk drawer under the counter, the grandfather clock chiming on the quarter hour, my dad's storage in the cabinetry above his space... I do not know if any of this is very important, and I wondered how I would feel about not returning to that home any more.

What is even funnier is that this time I returned "home" to a place that was not home. My parents' new place in Arizona is nothing like the split-level I grew up in. But, even situated in a retirement community underneath the flat, wide skies of the desert, it maintained the heart of a home. Some of the familiar pieces of childhood made their way south to this new location, even the grandfather clock. But, I am not sure that those things really matter. It felt like home because of the people who were in it. Resuming conversations, deepening relationships, retelling stories, and returning to family made it home. The dog racing after a ball, the turkey in the roaster, getting creamed at Scrabble by my mother, Dad "resting his eyes" in his chair after making lefse, and drinking coffee around the table in the morning. These are perhaps the pieces that make a place home and I enjoyed the return.

Sizing up Northern Arizona

My mind explodes here with the size, scale, and vibrancy of this stark place. We've enjoyed two weeks as Flagstaff honorary residents and have found much to explore and admire in the neighborhood with a few overnight jaunts to nearby parks. The expanses of land (and nose-drying arid atmosphere) are humbling. Here is a small taste of our adventures.

The Grand Canyon at sunrise

Red Rocks outside of Sedona

Antelope Canyon

Horseshoe Bend near Lake Powell

Feeling small on the West Fork trail

Arizona sunshine and blue sky

Some adjectives from our first 48 hours in Flagstaff: expansive, vast, dry, blue, sunny, open, overwhelming, prickly, dusty, chill, approachable, breezy, delicious, off-the-grid, groovy.

A good start to our vacation out West, we are reminded what a different space this is from our Washington, DC area bubble. From the moment we landed and were upsold a bigger car  rental to drive "up north" at the airport, we could feel the difference. Driving from Phoenix to Flagstaff through the desert, buttes, hills, and pine forests, our ears crackled with the elevation climb to over 7,000 feet. Our exploration here is decidedly different than out East, even if we just examine our neighborhood with a feed store, gun store, and church side by side by side. The differences are as welcome as the craft beer passport we are trying to earn (1 brewery down), and we hope to squeeze in a daily hike and as many books as possible. Definitely a good start.

What could be more therapeutic than sunshine and blue sky? Almost nothing at all. I feel better already.