leaving home to come home

Should be enough said. But for fear that I might be misunderstood, this transition has been simultaneously the most difficult and the easiest of my life.

I miss the thunderstorms, the strength and diligence of the equatorial sun, and my dear friends from the world over that captured bits of my admiration and pieces of my heart.

The place I have come back to is more beautiful than I remembered. To experience again the rare day during an Oregon winter when the sky becomes so clear and bright that to look at it takes your breath away. Or to see again the way the forests here at the bottom of the mountains defy all logic by staying green and lush under piles of cold white snow. And to remember the height of the waves of the Pacific, waves that demand your awe and respect as they pummel their history into the sands.

As if this wasn't enough, for every wonderful person I left in Tanzania, I had one wonderful person here waiting with open arms.

So this is how it goes when you leave home to come home.