All Journeys Start in Pendleton

Today, my husband and I began a journey to Columbus, Ohio. I know so little about the bugs, the winds, the trees and waters there. But a group of people who aim to think deeply about questions that involve people and natural wonders have made for themselves a place to think about these things. We will stay long enough for Adam to earn his PhD, and maybe that will be long enough for me to know the wonderfully small parts of Ohio.

Adam forgot to re-set his tripometer before we left to check how far we will travel, but I said that's OK. We'll set it in Pendleton, all journeys begin there anyway. And it has, with two good friends, a walk, a frisbee, a cat with five toes, thick, pink salmon, and a bottle of wine saved from our wedding.

In the garden today before we left, (a glorious morning with no wind and the chatter of birds and the sunshine that our cat, Pooky, absorbs as he sits facing the East on a wooden stool like a sentinel for all of catdom). The rhubarb is already setting seed (an alien looking pod that produces thousands of wafer thin progeny), the lettuce is beginning, the corn salad ending in little white flowers, the apple tree blossoming, and the garlic standing tall and acquiring brown tips like the first shadow of a beard that maturing boys get so excited about. I only looked, and smelled, and thought about the potential of a bed here, the perfect placement of a weed there, the absence in my bones when we leave...

Leaving a place that worked its way into my britches when I was little and used to play in the back of the wheat truck, a place caked over my arms and dusted in my eyes as I rode in the back of a pick up, breathed into my lungs in the early mornings after the alfalfa is freshly cut, is like opening every pore and feeling a great ache. The beauty of this earth never stands out more clearly than when I leave a place and people that I love. Whether a field of flox, a mountain, a cat, or my parents and grandparents, they all shine like jewels.

This writing is a Lovesome Thing for all who care to follow--an experience of being in the world as Lovingly as possible. Some days that's a lot, other days simply as much as I can mustard. All days it is genuine.