We have been here, the Northwest I mean, for 12 days.  I really didn’t realize how much I love it.

When a person grows up in a place and spends their whole life in that place, I think they don’t really realize how much they love it.  If they do love it that is.  I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve always said no matter where I’ve been, and I’ve been a few places, the Northwest is/was the most pretty.  I said that, and meant it.  It’s just that I don’t think I realized the depth of the statement, of my feeling for it, until I moved away.  I realize it now.

We have walked the streets of the city we love the most, spent time in the woods, helped to scatter my grandparents ashes, walked on the beach, spent time with family and friends, and slept in my childhood room so far during this visit.   All of that in less than two weeks.  I guess we’ve packed it in. Everything we’ve done, everyone we’ve spent time with, everywhere we’ve been has reminded me, further instilled in me, how much I love this place.  How much it is in me, a part of me.  How much I am, we are, of this place.  It’s in our cells.  I feel that.  And it makes me know that I will never take this place for granted again.  It makes me appreciate, even more, what the Northwest means to me.

Oh Oregon my Oregon… I do love you so.