Smells like Sagebrush

It isn't all bad, this coming home business. Reno for example, smells terrific. There's something about the smell of home that really brings me back to reality. Or at least makes me stop and think for a bit. Keeps me in the moment if you will.
I smell sagebrush blowing in the wind, sweet and dusty. Asphalt and construction, the hot exhausting smell of progress. And although I feel I have changed and grown older, some things will always be here, just as I left them. That massive, low Nevada sky that sits on the mountains hanging puffy clouds about town. These mountains, I have forgotton how beautiful they are. They circle around town; golden and violet, deep dark blues behind bright fiery mustard yellow, orange and sometimes rose. The abundant sagebrush is on every hill, every street and fills the barren hills behind my house. Fatty blue-belly lizards slither in and out of the rocks and bluebirds sing their oh so familiar tune.
I went on a walk with Charles wonder dog(who has totally gotten fat and can hardly keep up, even with me which is saying a lot) down my neighborhood streets and hills. The creeks run with cool fresh and probably dysentery free water, cows and horses and sheep hang out in their pastures. I smell damp hay to feed the animals, the rain threatening with the coming thunder storm. And let me tell you there aint no smell like desert rain. The dry wood on the deck, the old oil paint in my studio, ripe crab apples and willow trees. The carpet in the living room, the sandpaper couch, the laundry room. I can even still sense my moms footsteps first on carpet, then on wood, and back to carpet again as she walks through the house in the morning for work. The sticky smell of fruit sugars cooking in the kitchen fogged through the house while my mom made this years batch of crabapple jelly.
Today while I was walking I passed my old middle school bus stop and dragged the garbage cans up the long driveway, I felt like I could be eleven years old again. And just as moody.
I went out this weekend to the Wine Walk. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Drunken traipsing with Kaylene, her brother and a massive crew. Ran into everyone from camp counselors to neighbors to relatives. Reno reno reno. It was nice but drinking at 3pm can only end with a 9pm bedtime, no matter how tough you think you are, the wine walk gets you every time. Downtown is getting it together though, revamping, getting hip, or whatever. There was music down at Wingfield park and the river is looking awesome, and a rad place to hang out for hooligans. It even felt good just to walk those downtown streets. Hear the slots and see the mullets, the jeans and Harley t-shirts, the smell of cigarettes coming out of all the tattoo shops.
This is my home after all, and I do love it for what it is. The sun shines almost every day, everyone talks to you wherever you go and waves at you when you're on the street. I can walk five minutes and be completely surrounded by desert. I can ride my bike, eh thirty minutes and be downtown. I left for a reason and I know that I can't live here forever, but I'm here now and I need to understand Reno for what it is. My home. Complete with laundry machine, comfy bed, fridge with food in it, art studio, drum set and of course my loving family and friends.
I am still desperately trying to pull myself together however.
I go back and forth between Goldie Hawn in the beginning of Death Becomes Her, and Zach Braff in Garden State. Not that good.
I find it hard not to cuddle up on the couch with my favorite mug and watch hours and hours of recorded Entourage. Actually hard is to go through a year's mail, call all the friends I've missed, come to grips with the people I love who've died, update my cv, balance the longest distance relationship ever, and find a purpose in life.
So I decided to roll out. I bought a bus ticket to L.A. and am heading there in two days to see my brother, my aunt and uncle and my grandparents. Then see more friends around SoCal, and then I think I'm going to make my way up to Seattle and maybe to Vancouver. Because I need just a little more time moving before I can totally pause.