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Arkansas: My Happy Place

October 21, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

Once I cross the state line into Arkansas (from any direction), I can breathe and think as the pace seems to slow just a notch.

I was born there.

I couldn’t get away fast enough.

I hurry back as often as I can.

Arkansas is where I go to relax, recharge, remember.

I’m headed there today.

Hot Springs

Lake Norfork

Dairy Hollow Writer’s Colony, Eureka Springs

Keiser

Hemingway-Pfeiffer, Piggott

Fayetteville

The Farm. Mississippi County

Maya Angelou said the ache for home lives in all of us.

Where’s your happy place?

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
― Donald Miller

Musical Pairing:

Los Lonely Boys, Heaven

at home in Astoria, Oregon

August 21, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

sunrise, Columbia River, Astoria, Oregon

This morning I awoke to cool breezes and the sound of sea gulls. Before I opened my eyes, I thought about how we are born into and become part of a place.

That place becomes part of us.

Those who live on the ocean live and breathe the sea like a farmer back home is consumed by the soil and weather and crops. Do peaceful sunrises and vivid ocean sunsets become commonplace and normal after a lifetime living near the water?

Maybe I could find someone willing to trade places for a year. I would willingly exchange one harsh, wet winter for another month like yesterday.

Sunset, Columbia River, Astoria, Oregon

talya

saturday morning

August 10, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

Daylight peeps into our windows, moving across the longleaf pine floors just as it has each morning for over a hundred years. Same windows. Same floors. Same walls.

Yet the angle of the sun feels different on Saturday.

Lucy snoozes in a bright spot near the window keeping one eye on a squirrel already gathering nuts for winter.

John reads the comic section of the newspaper. He is silent except for an occasional chuckle.

I write and enjoy my first cup of coffee, just as I did yesterday and the day before. But coffee tastes different on Saturday.

talya

Musical Pairing:

Saturday Sun, Nick Drake