There are any number of great and good aspects of traveling, not the least of witch is ending up back at the place where all your stuff stays (and where you have sole dominion over the air conditioning and your schedule). Going home is always bittersweet and leaving tends to bring out more melancholy in me that usual. I’ve lived somewhere other than “home” for the better part of the last decade and despite that, I still think of it as exactly that; home. In a different time and place, maybe I’d go back, but every trip reminds me just how much I have changed (no matter all my protestations to the contrary) and how much the mountains haven’t. I may be from them, but I’m not of them any more. At the first opportunity, I went downstate and stayed… and then logged a couple of hundred thousand miles after that. When I left I swore I’d never be nostalgic for the deep quiet of the woods or the long whistle of a coal train rolling through a mining town. On a purely objective level, there’s no reason to think of home as a place I’ll ever live again. On an emotional level, though, well, that’s another thing altogether.

I’m not quite foolish enough to believe that I can go home again. I’ve priced myself out of that market and since a guy’s got to work it’s nothing more than a happy thought. Even if it were possible, I can think of dozens of reasons it wouldn’t be a good idea. Maybe someday when I invent the equivalent of sliced bread or get around to writing my great misanthropic diatribe. When that happens, of course, home would be fighting a strong desire to go somewhere with palm trees and a rum economy. Until then, I suppose it’s enough that I have promises to keep… and miles to go before I sleep.