On this side of the Pacific Ocean is a beautiful place called Flagstaff, Arizona. It's full of IPA beers, urban trails, local DJs, organic food, and climbing friends. It looks mostly unchanged, except for the mob of people who pour out into the streets and to the bars on a Friday night. I look through this throng of people out searching for drink specials, and hope to see a couple of familiar faces. I look for those who started the university experience with me in 2006, those who influenced my views and perceptions of the world each year beyond that. I look for bearded gingers and a long haired man almost imitating a wizard as he tore through the campus on his rasta painted road bike, adorning bright green headphones, and blasting pretty lights on his way back to our little nook. I look for beautiful girls dressed in neon and glitter, same as me, taking over local clubs with ridiculous dance antics and overall shenanigans. I look around for penguin suits, cartoon character friends, and morph costumes to give me a sense of home, but things have changed. I don't see the faces that remember my own. I remember a time when I knew most people in this place, and though that was part of the reason I left this little town, it seems a little empty without the same crew of folks taking over this place and painting it red.
When I've talked about home in the past, I've always attempted to pin point what it is that makes me feel that sense of belonging that only a "home" can provide. I've attempted to assert that home is where your friends are, where your heart is, or where you see yourself feeling settled. At the end of my travels, I found that my home was in me and it was with me when I packed up my backpack with two years worth of belongings and traipsed across the world. However, I did believe that when I ended up in the Grand Canyon State, that I would find a little bit more that made me feel connected to this place.
A newly acquired friend asked me, "are you finding that there is nothing left here for you now?"
I think at the time I told him that that was, in fact, the case -that there isn't anything left for me here except for the people. That maybe I had romanticized the place and that perhaps, I didn't have anything tying me to northern Arizona anymore. Then, I took to the trails this morning; I headed into open space to run around and get some perspective. In the wide openness of the wildflower fields underneath the ol' "sky blue sky" juxtaposed with beautiful caldera mountains, I realized that I am still romanticizing this place. And, I'm fine with it. In fact, I do love Flagstaff. I love the town and the beauty of the location, paired all of the things that I have been missing - the handful of friends I have here, family dinners, good local food, the peaks, the red rocks, and the overall funkiness that is so signature to Flagstaff. It makes me laugh. It makes me smile just being here and people watching. At the end of the day, I love this little mountain location, but I think I came back here to find my heart and it isn't here.
So if my home is in me, then where is my heart?
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