Day 87

Recently saw another sign by the freeway entrance.

SOMEWHERE ELSE AND BACK.

Liked the spirit of the sign, so I pulled over and the travelers piled gratefully into my truck. Young university students, male and female - one of each. Tired of "here" and taking a semester off to go see it all, where ever IT is.

"But your sign says 'and back.' "

"Well this is home, you know, and we like it here. We just want to be somewhere else for a while. You ever feel that way?"

"About once a week actually."

Robert Fulghum, "It was on Fire when I laid down on it"  

Sometimes I get wanderlust. Big time. It usually hits hardest right around this time of year when things start to thaw out from winters icy cover, reaching hopefully towards warmth and growth and possibilities. From the first chilly rainstorms of October to the last odd snowstorms of March, I love staying close to home. On the best of days these months are cozy. On the worst, they're prison.

But there is just something...intoxicating about days like this one. Days where all you need is a light sweater. Days where not only do you remember that the sun provides light and warmth, but where you are surprised how you ever forgot. Days where the air is thick with the smells of bulb blossoms and new grass. Days where the sprinklers come out of hiding and flash rainbows across large hillside lawns, occasionally drifting over onto the hot asphalt releasing a scent that is just too full of summer afternoons to describe.

These days get me dreaming about a life where I won't be weighed down by my planner, where I can sit and enjoy and explore the people and places beyond my little bubble.

It is a dream of freedom and romance and adventure. And childish though it seems, I have never been able to shake the feeling that when "someday" comes and I get that chance to be somewhere else for awhile, that it will be magical, pivotal even.

In that time and in that place, whenever and whereever it may be, I will find something.

Something immensely beautiful, precious, and life changing.

Something I won't even know I'm searching for.

And in my dreams this sometime, someplace, something will all come together when the earth is warm and the sky is bright and my heart is full. This thing will be magic, and if there is anything I know, it is that magic comes with the spring.

But....I also know that spring and summer give way to fall. And when that happens I will come home to wool sweaters and ginger cookies and candlelight.

The season of adventure will give way to cozy once more.

I'm not sure what will happen then. I haven't thought that far. I just know that as much as my soul craves somewhere else (anywhere else) I also realize that we must all come home eventually.

So dear reader, if by some chance you see me standing among a flush of wildflowers on a roadside in early April armed only with a cardboard sign and a dream, stop and say hello.

And if you're willing we can wander together, crossing fences and wading through streams, all the while filling our hearts with love and learning and chance and boldness, so that by the end of our journey we will be able to return home as fresh and alive as springtime.

Perhaps it is then that the magic will really happen. The moment of homecoming where we bring with us more than postcards and backpacks full of laundry.

We bring the world to plant in the heart of our home.

Oh, and what beauty it will grow.