Coming Home

Coming home is always the best part of being away. This trip has helped me appreciate home in a different way. Though there are still things that I am looking for that Calgary cannot accommodate, I am so acutely aware that Canada is “home” for me. I still want to explore different places, and would not pass-up and opportunity to live abroad for a period. However, Canada is where I will settle my feet at the end of the day.

There is nothing like the feeling of walking through the arrival gate at the airport after you have been away for so long. It is a feeling of familiarity – of safety and comfort. It is a feeling that I always look forward to as a part of traveling, no matter how itchy my feet were at the beginning of the trip for “away.”

I am now in Lloydminster, Alberta. It is the city my grandparents live in. I appreciate coming here because it reminds me of where I come from. Of my beginnings. After a long trip abroad, this city helps me put my feet back on the ground, and it helps me remember that my beginnings are as important as where I am looking forward to in the future. But even more than Lloydminster, the 5.5 hour drive between Calgary and Lloydminster is what reminds me that my feet are securely fastened to this land.

I love the Alberta landscape. It has the calm beauty of space and distance. The land rolls out in all directions. It is nearly the end of April, and snow still covers the farmer’s fields. Though I cannot wait for spring – for new life and warm days, there is something so irresistible about what surrounds me. Frost kisses the tips of the skeleton trees as fog gently blankets the surrounding landscape. The warm glow of a sun, not to be outdone by the fog, gives everything a golden hue – complementing the stark white and black of the snow and silhouetted trees. It does not matter where I settle in the future – this image will always be the one that pushes it’s way to the front of my mind when I think “home.”