What’s that thing called when you feel a magnetic pull to a place that isn’t home, but feels like maybe it was home a dozen lifetimes ago?

“All my relations.” “…refers to an individual’s multidimensional bond with the entire world, including people– from close relatives to strangers, from the living ancestors who lived long before– and also the rocks, the plants, the earth, the sky, and all creatures. Ancient cultures have long understood that we exist in relationship to all, are affected by all and affect all. ( Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal, 52.)

You and this place- Death Valley, it feels like you were secret lovers once. You feel a connection- an undeniable chemistry with the expansive blue sky, the distant mountains, the sand, stone, and arid desolation.

You two were meant to be.

It’s not strange, nor foreign, not even “just another place.” There is a comforting familiarity, an ease, a flow between you that you’ve never felt or had with any one place before. You instantly feel both regret for arriving so late in life, and yet so cherished in this moment.

Can the desert cherish you? Can the fine sand whisper a poem just for you in your ear?

You just click.

with the sunshine, with the centuries old formations-

age is just a number. You’ve always been drawn to the aged, the older, the wiser, anyway.

Love isn’t it. Neither is infatuation. And yet, the painted sunset feels nothing less than the grandest of gestures.

It is comfort, contentment, familiarity that stretches beyond the millennia-year-old stars.

It is the peace of being known, seen, understood and accepted for who you are, the beauty of you and your origins.

What’s that thing called- when you know you were made from the same dust?

when you realize what you’ve been calling “home,” has only been a shadow of the truth?

What’s that thing called when you yearn for someone a place that you realize is truly home?