Once More Into the Backyard

9/25/2017

“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.” - L. Frank Baum

To quote a Frank Sinatra song, "It's awfully nice to go traveling... but it's so much nicer coming home."

It's easy to be enchanted by the exotic, to be dazzled by the distant, or romanced by the unknown. For us in the States, there's a magical quality about the Alps or the Arabian deserts or the rain forests of the South America that call to us like Sirens to Odysseus. I know they do for me, anyway (I blame National Geographic for instilling me with the travel bug at a young and tender age). But while these natural enchantresses have, in truth, their own unique charm, it's all too easy to forget that home has it's own as well.

New Hampshire's White Mountains, Maine's majestic coastlines, and the colonial past of Massachusetts may not have quite as much literature, poetry, and art to celebrate and advertise their charms as Switzerland's Alps, Italy's Mediterranean Coast, or China's Imperial past, but they are no less worthy of exploration. If we take time and effort to explore and enjoy and appreciate where we are, we'll be the better for it and, in the long run, better able to appreciate the foreign as well. The world is a big and beautiful place and our backyard is a part of that awesome.

So keep traveling, keep exploring, but take care not to neglect the gems close at hand: the backyard has as much to offer as anywhere else in the world.