Home.  

I’ve never forgotten the way that the Provo City valley stretched out in front of our verandah.  The way that the lightning creased the sky in an instant flashing down from above while we sat huddled in blankets just watching, and waiting for the rain.  I can still hear the sounds of the aspen trees brushing up against the house in the wind, their leaves chiming as they rustle together.  And that smell.  Overpowering as the ground soaks up water for the first time in months.  Steam dribbling upward lazily from the cracks in the pavement.  

Home.

For the most part Ceiba’s only grow at sea level. Their defining roots grasping into the ground around the trunk.  The cool smooth bark stretching and stretching and stretching an impossible distance into the canopy.  The legend says that the Ceiba in Chamelco was planted by Aj Poop Batz’, chieftain among chieftains, king among kings.  Planted to guard a bell he carried underground, guided by the spirits of the homeland as he brought back this strange gift from Spain.  Bell or no, the Ceiba towers over the central park, in front of the old white church front.  The broken jagged outline of the mountains reaching out into the distance behind.

Home.

It’s freezing. One of those perfect mornings where we come tumbling out of the fifteen passenger van to discover that the fog we were driving through in the valley below hasn’t touched the lake. Deep blue, before the sunrise, the stars are reflected as perfectly below as they are above--once you push past the ice crusting the edge of the water.  We’ve beaten even the fisherman and the park ranger. Coach cuts the engine on his skiff, mostly so we can hear him yell a little better, and for a brief second the only sound is the glide of the hull in the water and the echo of the coxswains last call.

Home.

Tony, who used to work here until last year, would repeatedly declare in his thick Yorkshire accent, that these were the best gardens in the south of England. And for all I know, he may have been right.  Perfectly trimmed lawn, literally acres of daffodils and meandering red gravel paths perfectly contained by Queen Anne style red brick.  There is a sense of timelessness here. The students sitting on the lawn, studying and laughing in the sun, will be gone in a few years time, but there will always be students.  Sitting in the sun. Tony is gone. But there are still gardeners trimming the edges of the pathways, and minding the daffodil fields.

Home.

Where the huckleberries are, and the mountain looms. Where we fight and laugh and cry and pray. Where the smell of the ocean drifts in on the wind, and the rain washes all the dust away. The Big Pink Building still soars behind the mistake they are building on Burnside, and Californians are driving up the cost of our coffee our gas and our apartments.  Where an old man still makes pottery on a wagon wheel, and we still smile a sad smile when we cross the Hawthorne, just remembering Working Kirk Reeves. Where my bicycle tire got caught in the tracks, and where I didn’t have time this summer to buy one Hermiston Melon.  Walla Walla season isn’t on yet, and dammit the Thorns lost this weekend.

Home.

Because I’ll always forget to do one last thing before I leave. And to say one last goodbye.