Phalaenopsis

It's Thanksgiving week and family is foremost in my thoughts.

I was supposed to spend this week in Texas, pitching a tent on the beaches of South Padre Island as I had for so many years of my youth. Fishing on Triangle Island in Laguna Madre.

When I close my eyes, the taste of brine is still on my tongue and my skin sand beaten by so many memories.

That's how we spent Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. And while there's a lasting and longingness in my lustful though now grey and grizzled, bearded self to return there, I know I cannot.

There's no return trip.

I remember on our walk Savage Mountain, the highest peak on the Great Allegheny Trail and I was having a shitty day. I mean the kinda day when you ask yourself, 'Why am I doing this?'

And then you push through the mountain and you can see for hundreds of miles and it all becomes clear.

There is no glory without the grind. There are no blue orchids. And there is no going home whatever and wherever that place is when you close your eyes.

But there is Thanks.

And whether that's a start or a finish to a sentence, to a friendship, to a journey, and to a love, this is what we celebrate this week.