That’s what we’ve always said as we’ve pulled up with relief to our ‘home sweet home’ at the end of a trip. It is good to travel and very good to be home.
We take for granted the easy travels we make these days, from Pacific rainforest in the golden fling of autumn to snow swept prairies hunkering down for the winter, all in a day’s drive. Our greatest hardship is the price of gas at $1.33/liter (that’s $4.43/US gallon) in the west and $1.12/liter on the prairies. Oh, and the potholes and occasional road debris that beget flat tires. And the having to lose precious hours waiting to get a tire fixed… Then there is the hardship of getting sleepy while driving all this way and the weariness of sitting still so long. Ahhh the hardships of travel in our times.
But storytelling made the miles slip away as we traveled vicarioiusly by horseback and stagecoach with Spanish vaqueros and settlers moving west, establishing wild little cowtowns like Los Angelos. Louis L’amour weaves a fine tale.* We are caught in so many gun fights we lose count. We imagine the austere grandeur of the California deserts, and their unrelenting heat. We assuage our imagined thirst with our handy Gatorade bottles. And the miles pass as the Lexus rolls on…
…till we are safely home once again to our home sweet home at Willow’s End.
I slip out back after breakfast to see the morning mists rising as the sun strikes the chill wetness…
New catkins hang from the hazelnut tree. Had they been there all along? I hadn’t noticed.
Love notes have fallen again.
Long shadows mark the rising sun as misty corners give way to light
Shaggy ‘Ink Caps’ rise from nowhere.
Maple leaves fall in profusion on our acre now, thanks to this little sapling we rescued years back from a clear cut forest. He has grown to make quite a display and what a lot of fine compost these will yield…But the raking will be for another day. My fingers and toes are freezing. The fireside beckons. I have seen the morning.
It is good to be home. All is well under God’s blue heaven
“For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.
Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” Ps.135:5,6
–LS
*Need a cozy read for the long evenings? I commend to you the audio version of: The Lonesome Gods by Louis L’Amour. Read by David Strathairn.