Come on in, you need rest. Your body hasn't been as faithful to you as you had always believed it would and you can remind yourself a thousand times that modern medicine can do wonders these days but that still doesn't stop that rising serpent called panic from constricting your chest, the slow kill. Come on in, take a load off. You have dirt under your fingernails and mud on your boots and your body is stronger when you work with the land and modern medicine really can do wonders and that serpent he's just a rising smoke. 

Storm's Coming. In one of those rare moments where I am exactly where I want to be: returning to that mountain with Maggie and Jessica and the cows and horses. This is how you return to yourself. These women, just like them mountains, are your damn flesh and blood. 

As Dalton said, home is this place I am perpetually heading toward and running from. Home is the place I am still searching and yearning for; I am familiar with its presence because I have found it before. I have built it before. In a month in a half I will pack all my belongings into boxes again. This time it's all roads headed west. 

Here's to the Land of the Long Leaf Pine, the Summer Land where the sun doth shine. Where the weak grow strong and strong grow great... Here's to down home, The Old North State! Here is to fighting back against a legislature that does not represent its people, that refuses to provide healthcare for the people of North Carolina, that is doing its damnedest to prevent access to an education and the voting booth and clean water. Here is to a people that will not be silenced. Here is to the people of North Carolina. 


Esse Quam Videri: To Be Rather Than to Seem.