Built for this.

And sometimes just like that, like lightning out of a clear sky, it comes back like it never left. To call it homesickness would be a misrepresentation of the facts. It is the distance and longing. The tug of heartstrings West that I know all to well. I was brave and stupid all at once to think that years or circumstance would change it all. It's in my bones and I can feel the weight of them, heavy with memory and understanding.

I was built for the skies. The ones that leave alpine glow on the Rockies, the ones that turn cerulean to dove grey and bright coral. The ones that are so immense that they free even the heart most locked up. I was built for driving fast on stick straight highways and black soil, and calving in spring, harvest in fall. My heart and soul were made to flit up scree slopes and through lodgepole pines. The muscle memory as clear as yesterday. An unwavering independence, a western heart synonymous with freedom. And it aches for just that. For home. For community. To be filled with mountain air and the dust blown across the fields. For something missing. Something more.