Loving Home

My dad was a farmer.  By mid-spring he was cultivating our fields, turning the dirt over, getting it ready for planting.  The sea gulls would trail behind him, looking for worms, finding them.  That scent of newly-turned soil was as luscious as spring itself.  My brother, a realtor, when he says he's selling dirt, means it in the nicest possible way.

Petrichor, a word I've used before, means the scent of summer rains on dried-out soil.  Still a scent that roils the mind.  You are just not the same once those scents find their way to your bones.

When you remember it's scents, it means you adore the land itself.

Politics come and goes, and how you feel about that changes too.  Money and economies mean different things in different parts of your life.  Religion may be a thread that runs throughout your life, but how conservative or however liberal you turn out to be depends on the last good idea and the experience of love coming in a thousand different ways.

The land remains.

Our fireworks are finished for this year.  The weekend is still open for camping.  We've survived the opening salvos of summer, an 111 degree start last Monday.

But we will love this place, these people, this land and this freedom for as long as the heart beats, and the breath remains.