Your Place

Just returned from a Northwest excursion with a minor epiphany pranging  around in my head:

For everyone there is a place.  Somewhere that makes them feel truly at 'home', although that's not quite saying it exactly.  Some clever, literary word or phrase that means 'plugged in' but sounds nicer would be closer to correct.

I am not quite sure where my perfect place is.  Not the Pacific Northwest, beautiful as it truly is.  When I am up there I feel as if I am looking at it all through a window of clearest glass, but a window still.  It might be Los Angeles, which I've grown to appreciate.  It could be the Texas Hill Country, or the deserts outside Las Vegas.  It could be the rivers and beaches from my childhood in Florida.  Or maybe the salt marshes and pine forests of the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where I first popped onto this planet.

Many will say there's no such thing.  That if there is a perfect place it's defined by the people  you know and not the geography of it.  But I think there is something that connects us to our own special piece of the Earth, and we are lucky indeed if we find that place in our lifetimes.