I love to get away, for a day, a weekend, or longer and I love to come home to the familiar again. This trip was back to the original grounds from which I’ve been transplanted.  It was a vacation of remembrances and renewals of relationships.  I notice that as I age, the good memories are the ones that have lingered to greet me.  Some events that were not at all funny when they occurred now are conduits for shared laughter among friends.  As I compared archives of thoughts and conclusions with family members, I realized how quickly we've carved canyons with our judgements of miniscule particles of hard information.  It's sad to count the years of separation we endure when materials of openness and forgiveness and tools of willingness are available for bridge building.  And when you've crossed over, the rifts seem like mere cracks in the sidewalk. 
              This year, it was just my granddaughter and I making the journey back to Montana.  We stopped at the familiar places but left the traveled path for some new discoveries.  I play the tour guide, throwing out tidbits of Montana history as we drive through the open museum at 75 mph and ask her to imagine what it must have been like for the Lewis and Clark travelers, Native Americans, or early pioneers before roads snaked through the passes and farm stripes lay across the valleys.  She looks up from her game and says 'uh-huH", and I wonder what will stick.   I voice my observations about what I did where and what has changed anyway because I now wish I had seen and learned more about my own parents’ and grandparents’ earlier communities.  I'm grateful, at any rate, to have her as my companion through my past and present.  More descriptive travelogue to follow.

Since those olden days of the 40’s and 50’s in Great Falls, a lot has changed, though some has not.  The downtown of my childhood is only in the photo album of my mind although many of the buildings still stand. Favorite restaurants and hang-outs are gone.  I’m inspired now to write my descriptions of my earlier life in detail.  When my memory has departed, I would like, if I am able, to read about who I was once.  Major health events and deaths of friends and family members remind me recording time is now.  

Just as I breathe a sigh of belonging as I pass through the last mountain passes of Idaho into Montana, the approach towards the Washington Cascades, with Mt. Rainier in the distance, is a welcoming sight.  I went home again, now I am home again.