Idahome Sunset

It intrigues me to think about the concept of a home.

What is home?

Is it where the heart is? My heart is sort of all over the place… it would be difficult to deem every place my heart is as my home. Who knows, maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

Is it where you were born? I was born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, lived there for nine months, then moved. I have never lived anywhere for more than four years, and I have lived in eight different places. I suppose I could just choose one of the places I have lived and call it home, but something about that doesn’t feel right. Not genuine.

Does home have to be a place? Maybe home is not a place, but a state of mind. A state of peace and comfort. An overwhelming feeling of belonging. That feeling you get in your chest when you know you are in the right place, doing the right thing. You know in these moments: you are meant to be alive. You are meant to be experiencing life. These moments are what I could call home.

Maybe home is where the heart is. I must have misinterpreted this statement before. Yes, my heart belongs to many things: music, art, writing, singing, dancing, reading, cooking, talking to someone I love, hearing someone talk about something they love, watching a sunset… the list is never-ending. But each moment within this list of pleasures lies a place my heart belongs. A place I call home.

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Let's take a look at the last thing on that list: watching a sunset. The photo above was taken in the backyard of my parent's house in Star, Idaho. I hardly had to edit it at all because it was almost perfect on its own. My editing process included me enhancing the brightness, clarity, and saturation ever-so-slightly. I have always loved watching sunsets. Something I love about traveling and having lived in several different places is being able to compare the sunsets to each other. I took a Spring break trip down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina a few years back. The sunsets there were so beautiful. The sky was overrun by pastels: baby blue, lavender, light pink, and that shade of yellow that reminds you of the most delicate flower. I was in awe.

Moving to Idaho about two years ago brought me an entirely new kind of sunset. Unlike the Outer Banks, Idaho carried with it the most vibrant variety of hues: breathtakingly bright oranges, reds, florescent pinks and yellows, and the most royal purples. Fortunately, my parents live in the middle of nowhere and have an enormous field behind the fence of their backyard, so I get to enjoy many of these sunsets when I visit them. They never get old. In fact, with each passing day, as the sun rises and falls, my appreciation for sunsets gets stronger and stronger.

My phone is flooded with pictures of sunsets from my parent's house. However, on the night when this particular photo was taken, I was almost in tears at the beauty the evening entailed. The sky was almost completely pink just minutes before the photo was taken. The birds were singing their final songs before tucking in for the night. The heat of the day had vanished and transformed into a cool evening with a gentle breeze just strong enough to rustle the trees. If a photo could include the smells of the summer barbeque from the neighbors house, the sound of the crickets as they woke up for the night, and the taste of the homemade blueberry pie my mom made for dessert that I ate before running outside to capture this sunset... then I would likely never stop staring at it.

When I look at a sunset, I am reminded of what home feels like. I now acknowledge that home does not need to be a place, but rather, it is the place that allows you to have a home. It is a place that allows your mind to escape from reality and create that special place where you can be at peace. You can be comfortable. you can be unafraid, for just a moment, of what anyone thinks of you. You're alive, and that's enough. You're you, and that's enough.

Home is where you find yourself and where you are yourself.