No place like home

When I wandered into the kitchen this morning to grab my cup of coffee, I looked out the window and spotted these glorious clouds.  Formations like these are rare in the Pacific Northwest -- for the most part the sky is either blue or gray -- but these highlighted masterpieces immediately took me back to Vermont, to steamy summer mornings spent at Shadowbrook Farm watching the sun rise over the hills and spire of Bennington.  So I ran for my camera (and good thing I went when I did, because the sky now is an almost uniform gray) to capture this wonderful mix of then and now, East Coast and West.

And echoing in my head, as I labeled the photo and re-sized it to post here, was Dorothy's mantra: "There's no place like home; There's no place like home." I loved Vermont, loved living there and always look forward to my returns. But I love it here in Washington as well, and though some piece of me misses each when I am with the other, for the most part I've grown very comfortable with my split allegiance.  Perhaps we all need to keep a bit of a balance between where we are and where we long to be? Maybe that's a way of ensuring we never get too set in our ways; too comfortable...