The snow is finally melting in my cozy Northern Idaho home. The moose are no longer cruising in front of my house to nibble on my plum tree. I saw my first robin today, have the windows open; it's a balmy 45 degrees according to the thermometer on the douglas fir by the back porch. I'm home, yet my mind and heart wanders back to Southern Africa.

I'm getting it all down, all the stories: people, places, adventures, thwarted romances and culinary discoveries. I chose to come back here, the only part of the North American continent I really feel at home. That's saying something because I am a true geographical mutt: inbred is a healthy restlessness that keeps me from doing anything remotely close to my nation's idea of a "normal " life. No house in foreclosure, no husband, no kids. Everything still fits in the smallest U-Haul you can rent. But this is home, I'm putting down roots. My best friend from college is two miles away. My father and closest sibling are a day's drive south through one of the West's most beautiful states. I have a freezer full of huckleberries, bing cherries, elk meat and wild trout from last summer's wanderings. I am once again an Idaho girl.

But Africa, the cradle of humankind. My brain swirls back to seeing the Spingboks beat the All Blacks outside of Pretoria, making fried chicken on the Fourth of July for everyone at the Coffee Shack Backbackers on the Wild Coast, flirting with the dishy South African pilot in Madagascar. I want to go back and say "Hi". See if the white rhino calf I got to name is doing okay in Swaziland, make sure my room is waiting for me in the toney Afrikaans neighborhood I called home for a good chunk of 2006. I celebrated my birthday there, was a spring baby for the first time in my life. Daffodils and tulips marked early September  rather than yellow school buses and the start of the pro football season. My spirit is split. I'm not being Tao, not living in the now. My body is here, my thoughts are there...and I honestly don't think I want any therapy to bring the two together just now.