Honey, I'm Home

So anyhow, I'm back, and as Homer first reminded us -- and it was old news then -- the return is as great a challenge as the journey.

My office looks almost as though for a year I have been in it only to plan my next foray out of it or describe my last one, never to inhabit or organize it. Which is not to say it usually looks much better than this, but just so you know: after a year of either planning a Trek, taking one, or getting in a blog post so I could start planning the next one, this is what it looks like. I should be thinking of folders, drawers, and shelves, but I beg you not to blame me for instead thinking of kerosene and a household match. Hold on, there's the phone: "Me? What show now? 'Pile People'? I haven't heard of it. Let me get back to you."

Sorry.

The laundry -- my main indoor daily chore -- has become a thing of madness, though I am working my way back in. Fortunately we had a dry summer so the outdoor chores I was failing to do in some ways went unnoticed. In my other chores I have mostly been derelict, with the expected result that I have returned to a houseful of people who at the very least have grown used to doing without me and more often cannot fail to think "dereliction of duty" when they notice I am around.

A year ago we had a cat. Now instead we have two birds. One of the three fish, if he has not died, is floating rather more substantially with the current than was once his habit, and he is significantly less wedded to the notion of the top being up just all the time.

Both license plates have stickers, but it took a firm reminder from someone with a very fancy car to get there.

All of which is to say, I didn't have to shoot an arrow through a dozen axes and kill off most of the neighborhood, but coming home is never easy.

Lawson dropped his pack and there he was, instantly falling for the young Hannah Smith, daughter of settler Richard Smith.  Lawson had the benefit of being utterly unconnected in North America and thus able to walk into the bush in December and walk back out in February, saying, "Okay, I guess I'll live here now," and then just living there.

I'm not saying I envy him. I'm just saying that was his world. And if my world is somewhat less adventurous, it has its rewards. 

Some kind of cool fungus.

A rainy day.

Metaphor for parental love? or just pretty?

For one thing, it has the same constant barrage of amazing things to notice as the Trek does, though with Sunday school and dinner and bills and the vacuuming you have to remind yourself to notice a little bit more. That's not bad, but you do have to remind yourself.

For another thing, it has the State Fair. You can talk about all the history you want -- nothing is as cool as the North Carolina State Fair, and here are some Lawson Trek-ian images to prove it. 

​It's not like traveling among the Indians, but it's still pretty cool. 

So anyhow. Home, for the duration. If you're wondering, what I'm doing now is planning how to make a book out of this undertaking, and I'll have updates for you about that as necessary. In any case, as I begin writing, I'll keep sharing details that I didn't get the chance to put up here during the madness of the actual travel.

North Carolina State Fair, Raleigh. One of the world's great environments.