We’ve been back about a month now from a long trip across Wyoming, into North Dakota. Started in Jackson Hole at the airport, where we passed under an arch made of antlers to our waiting ride to Jackson Lodge. I must admit, the Tetons made me want to stare at them for hours. I’m not the climbing-mountains kind of girl, but they pulled me in, and if I’d had the ability, equipment, stamina, or time, I’d have tried. At least a little bit.

We tootled down the Snake River in a raft for about ten miles, loving the beautiful day and all the soaring eagles and whatnot. I won’t go into every detail, but I found the landscape both foreign and familiar simultaneously. Wide open spaces, rugged mountains, burned hillsides with lodgepole pines poking up like black pins holding everything together - and I was back in Eastern Turkey. If we’d been driving on Roman roads I’d have been right at home. Yellowstone may as well have been Mars. Small towns, Native Americans everywhere, speaking their own language, and I was in my element. Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument ended our trip, and while I was pleased to see them for myself, I had moments of “why do this to a lovely mountain?” When I learned that the sculptor of the Crazy Horse site had five boys and five girls who worked with him or their mother from the age of five. I wondered what kind of childhood they could have had, sacrificed to their father’s compulsion.

The Powder River Valley came to life, as I remembered all the research I’d done for my westerns. The Johnson County War narrowed down to one bullet-hole scarred barn, and I met a retired cutting horse named Misty that I’d have traded everything I have to bring her home. Such intelligence. Such grace. A horse among horses.

Escaping the oppressive humidity of Virginia is good for the soul and body every now and then. We loved Wyoming. But home is still where I belong. I missed our dog. I missed our cat, and most of all, I missed our family. Home feels good.