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Refrain from feeding obsolete hungers.

[peter sagal]

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I drove through eastern Washington, as flat and golden and honest as the land I grew up on in Texas, and right as the landscape started to change, it happened again.

The ground rose away from me and swelled into rolling hills and valleys, the mountains speared the sky beyond the lifting fog, and as I crossed over the pass, I felt my stomach swoop and chills rise on the backs of my thighs. It's the exact same way I feel when I'm in love and he walks into the room.

As I flew past this dramatic world, strange and mysterious, the air feeling like a fairy tale just about to begin, I thought, I'm in love. It was the same story last time, and the time before that. This is a place that makes me feel newly created, cradled, like I'm walking into a party or waking up alone in the wilderness. I even love the rain snaking down the back of my shirt.

What is it about a place that makes it where you belong? Where is this written? How does a stretch of coast, a teeming city, a collection of homesteads make us ache?

I don't know. But this I do: I've always loved going west until there's no more west to go into, until I'm right up against the water, my back to the sea and my face towards the sun rising.