Home Sweet Home

I remember when I returned home after living in Spain for two years and drove down West Temple in Salt Lake City. A city of 200,000 people appeared like a ghost town: low lying buildings, wide streets, and sparse traffic. The experience was so surreal that it has stayed with me for over twenty years.

One lesson I soon learned was that not only did my experience in Spain teach me about Spanish and European culture, it also taught me about my own. I now realized that things like rodeo, dutch-oven potatoes, and wide-open spaces are characteristic of my own native land.

Now the lesson is replayed as we return from a two week trip to Thailand.

The sky is blue and clear and you can see over fifty miles in any direction. There is no haze, and the mountains on the horizon are crisp in image. The air is clean and pure and I can inhale to the deepest part of my lungs with no hesitation. The temperature is a bit brisk, but we no longer sweat or break out in rashes from the heat. A skiff of snow remains on the mountains.

The water is pure. Here I can turn on the tap in my kitchen and fill a big glass of water. In the mountains I can find a young stream, then kneel, and drink to my own satisfaction.

In the mountains I can smell the musky scent of pine trees or the woody smell of juniper bark. My favorite is to get a whiff of pungent sage brush, especially after an August rain storm. In September there is the masculine scent of a bull elk that has recently bedded down.

While on a hike through the hills there is the fine grit of dirt between tufts of wild grass, intermingled with random boulders strewn across the landscape. Cactus is a sure sign you're home—scattered clusters of prickly pear. And amidst all this, a jackrabbit takes off at a hundred miles an hour through the brush and out of sight. 

Perhaps the most telling sign that we are home is the sight of three cute little girls, waiting at the door, then latching around our necks when we pass the threshold. ♠