Places change us more than you realize. We travel to the familiar and foreign and meet people, sometimes assimilating into cultures that challenge our perception. Sometimes we breeze through, sometimes we outstay our welcome, sometimes we come back to people and places and take root. The questions that keep you up at night become bigger as you get older too. You start to think, where would I be if I weren’t here? There’s this collection of experiences and opinions that shroud you and become more complex every year you spend on this planet. And then you also realize you have a unique accent, stewed in all the places its been. And that you’ve left pieces of yourself in the places and people along the way. All that energy! Where does it go when you are no longer here, or there? Maybe in the bricks of your favorite house, or the fabric of your friends tshirt after a long hug, or into the woods, or into the river. Maybe it’s in the wind, or the snow, or the dew of a spring morning. I do know this; every place and person has its own energy and its own voice and you are drawn to that which is familiar as if you belonged there all along. And the places and people that feel like home make those big questions seem so small.