Calling from a Place

I hear a calling.  And it's not from a particular role in the world.  It's a calling from a place.  I have to go back out West as soon as I can.  Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, California, Arizona, wherever.  I have been struck with the American West in June and obsessed with it ever since.  All I know is that whatever I do, whatever passion I pursue, I want to do it out there where the mountains are high, the air is dry, and the view endless.

Perhaps I am not allowing myself to get to know the South enough.  The depths of the forests, the current of the rivers, the mist-shrouded old mountaintops.  I will, I will soon enough.  But in the meantime, I can't stop daydreaming about what's out there on the other side.

I wonder if this is the kind of calling that my mother felt after visiting the U.S.  Soon after our 10-day summer vacation through California, Arizona, and Nevada, my parents started planning to get our family back here.  In her mid-30s, it was her first time in a foreign country, and even before our trip ended, she said, "Let's come live here."  And we did come back, just a year afterwards.  My parents didn't know what they would do for a living after leaving everything behind...  Reckless surely, but I think I might understand now why they came.  They heard a calling from this country.

I think I hear one, too...

With this realization I might very well cry on my next Grand Canyon trip.  Back at where it all started...