It’s never easy to go home. And I think it only seems to get harder, perhaps more abstract and blurry, as one gets older — further and farther between from the starting line, literally and figuratively. Case-in-point, I recently returned home to my native North Country. 

It’s 9:54 a.m. Tuesday. I’m sitting at the old wooden kitchen table at my parents’ farmhouse in rural Upstate New York, within close range of the Canadian border, just a few farm fields away from the mighty, ancient Lake Champlain. 

The alarm on my smart phone echoed throughout the small cabin. It was 7:30 a.m. Saturday and I had to be somewhere in an hour — hopping onto a saddle for an early morning horse ride. 

When reporters, editors and publishers from all over North Carolina gather each year to hand out awards for the best work in the state, the talk inevitably turns to what is shop talk in this industry: the stories we’ve covered, the relationship with local officials back home, the challenges the industry faces as we’re all transforming our business models to accommodate changing reader habits. 

It was a beautiful sunny morning when I felt the urge to make the 45-minute drive to my hometown of Weaverville.

Mailbox 278 (pictured) along Route 581 in the unincorporated community of Nahunta, North Carolina. In the rural depths of Wayne County on the outskirts of the small city of Goldsboro. 

Hello from 36,000 feet above the Midwest on this otherwise quiet Monday afternoon.

I live in an old farmhouse that is literally falling apart. Each spring, clouds of termites rise in the bathroom and the bedroom, coating the windows and covering the kitchen stove and the mirrors in the bathroom with tiny wings — wings that clog my vacuum cleaner for weeks.

They say nostalgia and reminiscing can do two things to the psyche: be a buffer against ailments like depression and anxiety or exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions. Personally, I’ve experienced both sides of the coin. 

It’s Saturday evening here at my parents’ 1840 farmhouse in Upstate New York. The temperature is hovering around 15 degrees with a wind chill ducking below zero. It’s Jan. 8 and I was supposed to be back at my humble abode in Western North Carolina on Dec. 30.