"Go back home!"

Someone once said, and I can't recall who, "You can never go home".To a degree, I think it must be true. My trip "home" was interesting but quite honestly, I could not wait to get back to where home is now, the Ozarks.This is strange for a beach bum to be saying but Oh so true. Yep! One might not believe it but I grew up around the beach, barefoot, sand in my pockets, suntanned, the works. I visited the old haunts. Spent some time at "Windansea". The surf was southwesterly at 4 to 5. Take offs were nice and steep. A few good rides but damn! Was it ever crowded. People at the beach were like ants. Now I recall why I moved away in the first place. I remember surfing for weeks on end over at Blacks Beach without seeing another human footprint in the sand. Tough wasn't it? Glassy curls in the Pacific, well formed and beautiful to ride, warm sun, warm water, all to my self. Then some jughead "journalist" thought it a brilliant idea to write a piece for some magazine extolling the virtues of this remote beach where some people were known to absorb the rays of the sun au natural . That's all it took. Every "maroon" in the western U.S. made his personal quest to "see" all dem nekkid bodies. Yep! You guessed it! The place is now a tourist trap and the two gals who frequented the beach without their attire have long since moved on to another secret spot.

Ate some great food while on my visit, but ya know what? It wasn't all that great. Certainly not as good as I remember it being. Met with some good friends and an old lover. Friendships remain, I think, forever. Old sparks (some loves never die regardless of where our paths take us) are always present but nothing is ever the same.

True friends I note are always there. A presence. I note with the passing of time that those friendships are warm and caring. We may not see each other for a good deal of time but when circumstances bring us again into each other's company it is as if we were never apart. We nearly continue the last sentence from perhaps months or years before. Yeah! I'm fortunate to have a few of those. One or two I've actually met here in cyberspace.

So, could I go back home? Home is that place where I now reside. Roots, it seems, grow quickly when you like where you live. And, I find that I love that.