When I was a boy growing up in the small town of Astoria, Oregon, I long dreamed that I would someday move far away. While I was proud of my family and our heritage, I couldn't wait to go to college; to move away to the city and find a new larger life.
Now, after over twenty years of living away from my hometown, I have returned with my wife, daughter, and mother for a brief time in order to pay some holiday season visits and lay wreaths on the graves of my ancestors whose bones lie buried here.
Sitting here alongside the lower Columbia River, listening to water lapping at the pilings and smelling the sweet air blowing in from the nearby Pacific Ocean, I am overcome by the awareness that, all dreams of my youth put aside, there is no where else in the world I would rather be. It is here that I am truly home.
Peace.
