I have been gone for 86 days–almost three months on the road. People often ask, “How can you stay away for so long?” but I always ask, “How come you never get away?” Home is where you make it. It isn’t a building or a city, it’s not a house that you built or an apartment you rent. Your home is where your heart is, to coin a cliche, so, in a sense, I am always home, whether I am at the cabin in northern Minnesota, or the farm, or in Europe. I have long since ceased being a tourist, even when I’m touring a castle, passing through customs, or checking a map. I ride the subway as if I were a local, brandishing my transport pass as if I had lived there twenty years. In sense, I am always going home–to the farm, in the city, at the university, on the plains of central Texas. One should not obsess one way or another about what “home” means. I find that the journey home is so much easier to make when I am going somewhere that looks, smells, and feels like home. I can wait in airport–which is not home, definitely not home–when I know that the plane I am waiting for is going “home.” Home is more about the people and less about the stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stuff, but stuff will never love you and can always be replaced–not so true about the human element. So if you are going home and will see folks, greet them for me, tell them I am fine, and that I will be there soon.