My place

And by that, I don't mean barefoot in the kitchen. Ba dum ching. (Aaron would be rolling is eyes right about now.)
Nope, my place is Grand Canyon. I have said this before, and I know it sounds cheesy-cause it is, but it beckons me. No other place does that unless there is a human that I love who just happens to live there, too. So then not the place but the person does the beckoning.
I can just be plowing through my days, haven't given it a thought in a while and then suddenly I am overcome with this feeling to go there. To smell it, to feel the hot sun on me and the rocks, to listen to the wind that sounds different there than any other place I've been, to watch intently for a condor and then take a deep breath when I have found her and just watch her do her gliding dance in the sky. That perfect, deep blue sky. I feel like a part of me is alive only there and after each visit, this special place in my soul is given a refill to last through some more of the roller coaster of life.
I feel like nobody understands it the way I do. Even the people whose books I have read; those that have dedicated large parts of their lives to study/hike/map/live it, I find something amiss with them as well. I am arrogant about it but quietly so. I think I only ever tell Aaron about the wrongness of these others that, maybe, I am a LITTLE bit jealous of, too.
When I hear of someone going all the way there just to stand on the rim, take a few pictures and then visit the gift shop, I think, "you fool!" But then I am instantly satisfied as well because that is one less person who has looked deep inside and found an ounce of what it has to offer to the world. It's one less person who has muddled it up with a chewed piece of gum, a broken branch from their off-the-trail footfall, or stupidly become mad at it for not being all that they had hoped it would be. So by not discovering more of it, they have left more for me.
To me, it is the most beautiful photograph I have ever seen. It is the most relaxed I could ever get. It is the most I have ever pushed myself. It is literally a place where I learned about who I am and what I am made of. Where I have been able to learn to work through pain to achieve my goal. To dream big and do what you set out to do.
I remember when I turned 25 and I wrote in my journal that I had not yet climbed my canyon. Well I am now 36 and I have climbed my canyon. Lots of times. I was with exactly the person in the whole history of the world I would want to be with the very first time my feet were in that awesome brown water at the very bottom of that canyon. I have watched the faces of people I adore as they stared upon its beauty for the first time. That melts my heart! The stars are better, the sunsets are better, the sand smells better, everything is better when I am there. It has stirred more music, lyrics and poetry within me and been my inspiration more so than anything but that man I love.
Now, I am going to put pencil to paper and decide when I can go again. It will not be soon enough.