Homesick

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til its gone?
~Joni Mitchell

This isn't about bikes or riding them.  It might not even be about cancer - at least not directly.  Ok, it isn't about cancer, either.

I'm from Minnesota originally.  I was born, raised and for many years lived in Duluth.  About 25 years ago I pulled up stakes and moved to Colorado.  I've been here since.  Until recently, I never thought of Colorado as home.  It takes awhile for that sense of place to settle in, but in the last few years I've come to think more of Colorado as home.  Actually, as I told my wife not too long ago ....

My home is wherever you are.

Anyway, today I got homesick.  Not for Colorado.  Homesick for Minnesota.

Courtesy of SS & DS

An old friend, back in Duluth, posted to Facebook some snapshots of a weekend outing with her husband.  One of the pictures was shot across a lake to the far shore, maybe a mile away. The water is dead calm.  Low-hanging clouds.  Green like you can't imagine. So Minnesota.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  I could feel the air - warm, humid - palpable.  Even silence has a sound to it and I could hear it.  The smells - rich, heavy, wet - pine mixed with maple, water over black muck. Somewhere, across the lake, a loon calls.....

There's a new man on the lake.

In a rush, there's this pull at the heart - something calling me home, even if only for a day, or an hour.  A feast awaits; a feast for the soul.

And I can't go.

A deep sense of loss.

... you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

Why did I ever leave?

Why can't I go back?

And with all of my heart and every shred of soul I have left, I want to.  More than anything else.

Homesick.