Im back home (here in Australia) again.
Its funny, but for the first time in a long while I missed the Australian landscape.

I have never really felt at home in the bush. To me, it oftentimes feels abrasive, and desiccated and ancient and unwelcoming. Sometimes it feels like beautiful danger.

Is that not strange? I have lived here since I was a kid. I have travelled all over the place.
Perhaps more accurately,
I have traveled through it.
Without traveling into it.
I have appreciated it, without entraining it.
Appreciation,
without any deeper reciprocation.

Contrast this with my immediate feelings of homecoming when I enter the forests of Canada, or Japan, or Alaska or even New Zealand. Those spaces flow into me and I feel mystery and wonder.

I suspect I would feel even more grounded in the wilder places of the UK where I am from. I suspect power places such as Stonehenge and the Avebury stone circle and Ness of Brodgar might tug free much older emotions. But I have not been back since I was 5 years old to find out (I gotta work on that).

Yet.

This trip was different. I really missed the open spaces and the sounds or our landscapes. I missed the smells and the, light and the irrational dangerous anarchy.

Walking the streets of Tokyo, and climbing the temple steps of Uji, I wondered how it must be for Japanese travellers visiting this country for the first time. For these are two very different worlds.