3.20.23 // When a Place becomes a Home

When a place becomes home.
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After spending many years on the road, there are certain moments in a new place that take me from wanderer to rooted (even if just for a moment). They are the quiet moments of transition that make a foreign place into a home. They are the soft and subtle transitions that happen when I least anticipate them. They are the moments my soul settles in familiarity.
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One of those moments is when I start to notice the light in my house, Airbnb, or hotel.
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It's the recognition that the best light streams into the kitchen around 8 am and the bed will be cast in a golden glow around 3 pm. Deeper still, is when I start to chase the light, actively working my schedule to have breakfast in the warm sunshine while I sip my steaming cup of coffee, embracing the dust particles dancing in the streams of light.
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It's the moment I don't need to plug locations into the map app on my phone, working my way around town by pure memory- to get to the grocery store, I drive left to the roundabout with the statue that was decorated for St. Patrick’s Day, take the second exit, go by the bar with a consistently roaring fire and old ski hill gondola out front, and turn before I get to the Dutch Bros coffee.
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It's when Scout, a relatively calm and people-motivated dog, develops an intense crush on the neighbor's dog, Shadow. It's our casual, calm walks turning into a nose-to-the-ground hunt to find the most recent love of Scout's life.
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It's the moment when an adventure run around town turns into an opportunity to run into familiar faces.
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It was the moment when I transitioned from trying all the coffee shops with no real loyalty to finding one coffee shop that I'm smitten with.
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I used to feel so uncomfortable in the first stages of being in a new place, the unknown sometimes felt excessively daunting, but I love the feeling that comes after these moments of transition. And we can't have the transitions without the uncomfortable and unknown...
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So here is to the beautiful necessity of my soul feeling discomfort before the inevitable rush of comfort and familiarity that comes with sweet time and embrace of the awkward newness of a new place.