Feels Like Home

My sister and I both went to college in the Midwest. Multiple times a year, we'd load up the car and make the drive up through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana (stopping there for her), and Illinois. Winding mountain roads gave way to flat spaces as we neared our destinations, and it never quite felt right to be making our final stop in places with no hills, no valleys.

On the drive back home to Virginia, particularly in the spring and summer, I could feel my heart get lighter just based on the terrain - the fields giving way to trees as we reached the end of Ohio, the flat land turning to gentle hills, until we reached the soft, familiar Blue Ridge Mountains of our home state.

And it was right.



Andrew and I talked about staying in Chicago after I graduated, or moving back there after he finished law school. It's an awesome place - great schools in the suburbs, tons to do in the city, home of our alma mater. If you ignore the winters, it's perfect! But it wasn't home, and I don't think it ever would have felt permanent.

So we jumped around different areas in Virginia, but always found ourselves driving west on 66 when we wanted to get out of the cramped developments that make up Northern Virginia. And every time we got within sight of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I got that little butterfly feeling in my stomach, the lightness of heart because that is beauty. And that is home. And I can't believe that it actually is home for us now!

Old picture... But pretty close to our new place!