I did not know this is a thing. But indeed: Today!  And so. Of course…..Ginger. Ginger our golden puppy. Ginger our yellow dog. The stories we tell. The love we share. You captured our hearts with your “sorrowful eyes” and instantly became the sun holding our boy in orbit. We are fuller, richer, happier because you are part of our family story. We miss you. And we delight in every reunion.

The Sweetness of Dogs
by Mary Oliver

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. It’s full tonight.
So we go

And the moon rises, so beautiful it
makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself

thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s
perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up into
my face. As though I were just as wonderful
as the perfect moon.

Country Road take me home, to the place I belong….. John Denver

In April we flew to Oregon and spent 2+ weeks fully immersed in an unusually warm and absolutely glorious Oregon spring. We left piles of Alaska snow and a string of days stretched backward to months spanning a very long, white and cold winter. But in Oregon we could see grass. And it was green! Flowers and trees of all shapes and sizes were in full bloom. The air was warm. We ate ice cream and went to a Timbers game, just like summer. But the Oregon dream came to an end and, though the boys wore shorts, they tied on down coats as we walked through the revolving doors at the Portland International Airport for our flight back to Anchorage.

After the full-blast schedule of people and responsibilities I wondered how the transition back to my quiet Alaskan life would go. I expected the boys to miss their puppy Ginger who lives with my parents since our move. I was not eager to leave the presence of dear friends and family. We were returning to a place that relies on “shipments” for the food and goods that supply our needs and routines. Oregon weather could not have been any more spectacular during our visit and my news from Anchorage was filled with reports of cold, sloppy, late snow gloom.

As we began our descent into Anchorage, Ryan turned bright eyes to me and happily announced: “We’re Home!”

I rejoiced with him. But…. What could he possibly mean? I’ve wondered. And I’ve wrestled. Today I saw this quote, and something came clear:

“Home is where your story begins.” Or maybe home is where you are, where you can arrive, be greeted by a warm smile or maybe a hug, take off your shoes, and feel support. -David Cronin: Homeboy Industries Thought of the Day, May 13, 2013

It doesn’t matter where I take off my shoes. It matters that I can.

Set in place, but rooted in relationship. Home is where I am.

The word home summons up a place….that you have rich and complex feelings about, a place where you feel, or did feel once, uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel you belong and that in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment.

– Frederick Buechner

Late afternoon sun filled the cabin with warmth as my plane descended to PDX on a Friday in late September. For the first time in 14 years (and really my entire life) I was flying into Portland, but not coming home. Tears choked my vision as I flooded with the memories of key conversations and decisions that shaped this moment.

That weekend in Oregon was short and full. I soaked in the sun, the people, the projects (and our Ginger puppy love). Everything about the weekend would have indicated I was right where I belonged.

But David was back in Alaska texting me about the first snow of the season and taking the boys on an adventure to explore Hatcher Pass.

So that Saturday night I posted this on Facebook: David Searls took our boys on a magnificent Alaskan adventure and then posted pictures on Facebook. He knows how to remind me what I love most of all! I’ll be home soon.

I got on an airplane very early Monday morning and flew home.

Home.

REI Anchorage had a large map hanging in their entry and I couldn’t help snapping this picture:

The little red pin at the very top is where I shop now – far from the Oregon pins I know so well.

We’ve had many visitors from Oregon this winter. (Indeed last summer I whined about how NO ONE would visit me in the winter of my dread and thankfully I was wrong.) These frequent visitors have helped to diminish the impact of the great distance. But when I left my friend at the airport in late January and headed back home to a calendar with no more scheduled guests I felt my panic brain begin to fire. What am I doing and why are we here??

I’ve made some intentional choices to embrace this Alaskan adventure and I’m lucky because mountains and snow really do speak the language of my soul, but still I’ve felt cut loose and untethered here in this land so very far from home.

As I worked to breathe through the rising panic that Monday morning I think it was no accident that my Pandora station played an outlier song I really had never heard before (I am pretty much pop culture illiterate and ever grateful for google). Settle down. It’ll all be clear. Don’t pay no mind to the demons, they fill you with fear. If you get lost you can always be found…..

…..Just know you’re not alone. Cause I’m gonna make this place your home.

This weekend marks 6 months of living in Alaska. I look out my window this afternoon and watch the falling snow obscure my magnificent mountain view.

And I know for sure: right now I belong right here.