Carson City's Capital building and Mountains ... and best ballerina!
I wish I had more pics to upload and share. I was asked to write a little article about Carson City for the paper here in Colombia so I thought I'd share that instead ...
Coming Home:
I always get excited when the pilot announces her initial descent and fight my way to a window seat to see the snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains and Lake Tahoe before dipping into Reno, a strange mishmash of suburbia meets quasi-Vegas. Reno doesn't have so much a "strip" as a "smatter" of Casinos.
We drive from Reno to Carson City through Washoe Valley's gale winds known to topple eighteen-wheelers while attracting extreme sportsmen who think it's a good idea to jump off the surrounding mountains and paraglide through the valley. And then we're home. My parents live in the same house where I grew up. I've known this home for thirty-seven years now -- the familiar creaks in the floorboards and rattle of wind on the windows.
The first thing I notice when I come home are the smells: the clean, spring scents of sagebrush and lilac -- crisp and fresh -- unlike the musky, perfumed smell of the tropics. The air feels lightter and, granted, drier so my lips are practically peeling as soon as we get off the plane. I end up using about a gallon of lotion a day.
Then I notice the silence. Quiet. The sense that not every bit of air space needs to be filled with blaring music, talking, talking over talking, and honking horns. Silence. The kind of silence that lets you hear the sheep bleating on the hillside, dogs barking in a distance, the hum of bicycle wheels and click of spokes, the wind in the trees (and there is loads of wind); a welcome silence that tells me I'm home.
It's like slipping into me when I visit where I grew up -- no second guessing, no worrying about using the wrong verb tense. A timelessness in a town that's growing but doesn't seem to change. It's so easy to return to who I was ... and still am.
Perhaps John Ed Pearce is right when he says, "Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to."
