Homeward bound

When traveling to a new place, you look at the map and it's a great mystery. It is filled with foreign sounding place names, and borders with unknown countries. Then slowly, once you're there, the map comes to life. The strange sounding pronunciations become familiar. The distance from one location to another grows or shrinks depending on the quality of the road and the geography in between. Vague impressions of a culture are clarified or dispelled, replaced with something more intimate.

It's crossed our minds to keep on going. The mysterious map of South America is only a boat ride away. Just like it was hard to imagine what it would be like to be traveling before we left, it's now hard to imagine being home.

But Portland, Oregon draws us back to our lives-- to our house, friends, family, garden, work and the Pacific Northwest woods. We're so lucky to have such a great place to come back to. Even if it's raining.