During my traveling days, I preferred to go during transitional seasons. Fall was my favorite time, and I’d go north, against the migration of birds. I’d go to the mountains, or to big sky country, where the season unfurls earlier, go in search of the dying expressions of the leaves: red, orange, yellow, the resistant evergreens. There are lessons to be learned from the last gasp of beauty before the trees stand naked, bare armed against the coming winter.  It is possible to relearn the smell of the air before the weather changes, before rain; the cold prelude kiss of an early snowfall… things forgotten in an age of digitized hyper-realities and Hallmark memories of a man-made world that never really existed. And when I arrived back to home’s warm arms, I unpacked and set it free: the bright dying, the scent of the air.

It was the only homecoming gift I could think of that mattered.