Home.

We rolled home in the sunset, cool soft air pouring in through the windows, and I got the shivers and butterflies in my stomach when I saw my ecozone again. In Iowa the soil is so so deep and black, being stripmined by corn, and there's no wild in it. Across the Dakotas it rises up, gets drier, rolls rocky through Montana, and then crisps through the near-desert heart of Washington, leaving only brown and irrigated fields in stark dots. We came through the rockies, a mere pile of variably-sized gravel with trees poking through, and finally into real mountains that created the platonic-ideal crags and cones which live in my mind. Here you're cradled by stone and tree, the air is gentled by the ocean, and everything grows like gangbusters.

At the border they didn't ask to see ID, they just knew we were supposed to be here, and through we went. Gone eleven days, no shopping.

From US border to US border we travelled 6500 km, from Blaine, Washington to Lytton, Washington via Twin Lakes, Iowa. We went across on the I90, and back on the I94 and then the I90-- I recommend the latter troute, it's green and lovely as god's own garden in North Dakota, and there is a line in my trip log that labels part of that ride right before the edge of Montana as the most beautiful place on Earth. I could live there. The hills are low and rolling, things are green and rich, and startling shapes of hill and rock ride up - I would say, as Kim Stanley Robinson does of Mars, that the feng shui is strong.

We did all the driving in five days. That's a lot of driving per day. On the way back, the time zone change helped us. At the border we suddenly became giddy, on the way back, laughing and laughing, because the weight of being somewhere else was off us, and we were home.

Here we call it 'The US'. There it's 'America'. My family is there. I am here.

At one point, Justin was pretty drunk, and we were talking, and he says plaintively, "I don't speak Canadian, can you translate that into Iowa?"

It's morning now, and I've come back to sticky bits, confusion and chaos and pain that I knew would be waiting when I left. I need to put my house in order. The weight of obligation, of being a part of things and thus of both giving and recieving, of moderating and of pushing, is back on my shoulders. It was good to set it down for a bit and be a child again.

It is good to be back.

See you soon.

Wah

So I'm home.

It's lovely here- warm, rats, boys. There are some issues on the latter front that I'm working on, but hey.

I've got some piecework over the next few days, something tomorrow, something Monday, possibly more coming up in the next few weeks. I also may have some interviews, so that's good. I've been avoiding picking up the phone too much, but I can't be doing that for too long. I have a list of sixteen people I need to call already.

Monday dinner is happening on Monday this week, it'll be Tuesday next week.

I've got some Barenaked Ladies playing-- the first CD, Maybe You Should Drive, one of the many that accompanied us on the Iowa trip.

I'd really like to make it out to Wreck Beach soon. Tuesday, maybe? Wednesday? I don't even know who reads this thing.

I need to clean the house in the worst way. When I left two weeks-ish ago, Monday dinner wasn't fully cleaned up after (I left at 4:30 am the next day, so I disclaim a little responsibility there) and now there are bugs on the counter-- not anywhere else, but eew. I mean, really.

Blood time is over. Yay.

I'm going to a movie with Juggler and CrazyChris and Bob in a moment, so I don't have time to get super introspective, but I'd like to. Then again, I do best when I'm a little busier than this, when I don't have time to sit here and babble on and on about the lessons I've learned lately and the insights I've had.

My contacts are gooey from a ton of crying I did this afternoon. I feel a little clearer now.

I miss my cousins already. Why do I root so damn quickly? There are people in three parts of the world, now, that I want to be with. It's better because I can go visit Kelowna, Iowa not so much. Gotta work on the visiting thing.

Speaking of people I love, I should go make a facebook family dinner group. Mrf.