Home Sweet Home

On a road trip that was meant to seek beauty, we succeeded. I said we were no strangers to beauty, and this photo essay is to document the first two sweet days of being home. The old Celtic priests believed that the soul needs both travel and home to be complete. I know that is not true for everyone. But it is true of me. Coming back to our own five acres and the trails we built around and through it, with the garden still abounding with chard and kale, the colors of our own oak, ash, aspen, alder and maple turning and the rose hips fat and red and the madrona berries shining against the green leaves of that special tree completed this trip. Our eyes are still fresh. The work of the world has not yet settled over them .

Frog hunting in our pond.

Looking at our own land, with its secret and intimate places, like the mostly dead willow which gives me such deep companionship, and coming down to our own beach. touching my hand back again to the salty surface of the Pacific, I felt the goodness of knowing a place to be home.

San Juan Valley.

Farmer's Market.

Projects that await us.

Our beach.

Oystercatchers.

Looking out toward Victoria and Vancouver Island on the great Salish Sea.

Look carefully. See the mountains, just visible over the clouds? This is the vista that those of us who live in the shadow of the Cascades and Olympics know as intimately as our own reflections.