Utah

I did not grow up in this place.   This weird land of red rocks and mountains and weeks and months without rain.

I grew up on "the edge of the prairie" as it were.   Green woods and fields, deep lakes, flat earth and cloudy blue and grey skies.
I love my home state of Minnesota, as a teenager I would have sworn that I would never end up in Utah, even though I intended to come (temporarily!) for college.
A desert! I could never live there for more than a few years. 

 My first years at college, I hated the site of the ugly mountains surrounding me.
Keeping in the pollution, blocking the magnificent sunrises, making me feel like a claustrophobic ant in the bottom of a bowl.
When I realized that I loved Travis, I wept knowing that I would have to give up my home for a new one.
Home is wherever I'm with you. 
It was a heartbreaking decision to make. I really did feel that it was Travis or Minnesota, and oh! How I loved Minnesota. Travis and I hardly knew each other, but Minnesota and I had been together for years.



But.
Things change I guess.
It's been four long years since I've seen my sweet home.
I burst into tears when I heard Candiaan geese honking this fall and was reminded sharply of home. And yet.
This place is home now, too.
This weirdly shaped land is beautiful and tough.
It is warmth, like Minnesota is cool. It's the place that I fell in love, on long mosquito-free walks. It's the place I had my children, and we've laid out under shady trees together for two summers.

I don't feel claustrophobic anymore. In fact, I rather like the mountains. (From a distance, I am not interested in climbing them. At all.)

This place may not be my homeland, but it is the homeland of the three people I love the most. And somehow, over the past 6 years, Utah has burrowed it's way into my heart and I find that I love it here.

I still dream of the day when my family can live in Minnesota, that green and blue place- instead of this gold and purple place.
But really, I dream about living lots of places with these boys, and almost everywhere seems good. Desert, tropic, tundra, or paradise.
Just probably not California, Arizona, or Nevada.

Hawaii? Maine? Tennessee?
Yes. Thanks.

Argentina? Scotland? Kenya?
Someday.