There's no place like home

All of my boxes have made their way across the United States. I integrate them into my house as I integrate myself back to the Upper Delaware.

It’s good to be home. It’s pleasant to not carry a set of keys to get from floor to floor as it was in the dorm. I enjoy looking out onto green and listening to the birds.

Stephen and I are making our way through the meals that he had set aside throughout the winter, freezing a bit of them for me to taste. The pulled pork chili that he entered into the Lake Wallenpaupack Chili Off, while not a winner that March afternoon, was a delicious treat this May. The lentil soup with chipotle pepper was a nice combination of smoky, robust and hot. Our lives mirror those culinary experiments in the freezer, individually formed and revealing themselves with each passing day.

I’m not sure of his schedule yet, or mine.

For now I drift a bit, working on weddings and child dedications and keeping up with the usual editing work. I take a daily walk down my country road. Yesterday I sought the advice of the oak tree by the cabin in the woods. I have stood beneath that tree for some years now and asked for its wisdom.

In forming the question about my future endeavors I was reminded, “when you weather a storm, you weather a storm.” In perfect tree logic, we are what we are. We do what we do.

It is a joy to be home.