The Pale Blue Dot

Can the morning after a long trip reset the boundaries of "home"?

All travelers know it: that feeling of waking in the dark on the first morning back home after a long trip, that brief in-between moment when you are between time zones, feeling unanchored, adrift, and for just an instant or two, not quite sure where you are.

We have just returned from a three-week trip to Alaska, a trip filled with glaciers and islands and beach walks and waves. We have returned to a place of islands and beach walks and waves. And that first morning, lying in the dark, that feeling washed over mean like the tide. This time though, instead of fighting it, I stopped, let the feeling take its time in sorting itself out, taking a moment to think and wonder what it really means to be “home.”