Transplanting...Sitka Bound.

    How do you leave a place you have grown to call home?  A place where you know when and where the sorrel and boletas and wild rhubarb are ready to pick, and follow the seasons of the flowers during the summer months that nourish your soul? 

 I feel as if we’ve decided to rip our roots up and try to transplant, although not sure if the weathering process will do more damage, or make our leaves stronger.  In this town we became a family.  We were married.  Bought a home.  Decided to start a family.  Survived the loss of our first pregnancy, and welcomed a beautiful light into the world.  Here I met kindred spirits and became an artist and played music and found a voice for myself.  These are not simple roots offshot, but tap roots dug deep.  How do you transplant without a little of the ends being ripped off?  I feel so intimately connected to the windy tundra of these hills, that the rainforests of Sitka seem dark and scary.  But something about that fear, and the leap of faith required of this next adventure also makes me feel alive.  It makes me acutely aware of everything I’ve ever taken for granted here.  It makes the colors brighter, the wind sweeter, smiles more friendly, and it makes me treasure hugs and conversations from friends more than I thought possible.  If you see me grocery shopping and you ask how I’m doing, only to have me start crying in front of you, please don’t be alarmed.  It’s not a negative.  It’s good to love so deeply that you are heartbroken when it begins to come to a close.  Even if it is to a place.  And I am definitely heartbroken.  I am hopeful, and grateful, excited and heartbroken.