Quarter Year

Closure

Hello Everyone!

Azure and I have been home for a week now and I’ve been searching for the way to wrap up this trip but I just couldn’t find it. I was thinking about listing my favorite parts, but that seems petty. I was also thinking about sharing what I felt was the overarching theme of the trip, but I think you got the idea if you read the blogs.

Last year I wrote about my first reactions on arriving home and a lot of people had strong responses to that, so I think that’s how I want to do it. My first reaction:

As we were flying south toward Seattle I saw the Olympic mountains, dark and low and folded, and I remembered that Washington State has been populated for as long as Corsica has (Kennewick Man is 9,300 years old). Our place is as ancient as theirs, it’s just not as celebrated and I’ve never given it its due attention… our predecessors in the Pacific Northwest built with wood. No stones to run my hands across, no stones for new populations to wonder about or rebuild into new structures or interpret. Certainly there’s an archaeological record, but we don’t physically navigate history the way they do in Europe. Our culture hasn’t pulled ancient magic into the present the way they had on Corsica, but our landscape does suggest it. Where are those myths waiting?

Anyway, thank you for following us to Colombia and Europe this year. We’ll be back on the road in November.

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Tags: history, Kennewick Man, Olympic Mountains, recap, returning home, washington state