I’m home tonight, by home, I mean the place that I grew up. It still feels like home even with all the changes that have taken place over the last 40 odd years.
The place has grown up, like me or maybe out, like me. Lots of sprawl, lots of strip malls, fast food, Starbucks, Costco and all the modern conveniences are here now. We used to have to go to the big city for most of this stuff – either north to Bellingham or south to Seattle/Everett.
The house I lived in as a baby across from the college is now a mexican restaurant, but my grandparents little farm is still pretty close to the same. My highschool has gotten bigger, but some of the berry fields where I earned my first pay checks still grow sweet berries. The local grocery store where we shopped is gone, but “Big Scoop” our local ice cream parlor is still here.
It still feels like home even when I have lived more of my life other places now. Maybe it is just the concentrated history I have with the place, lots of firsts; first jobs, first kisses, first dates, first drives, first heartbreak, first loss, first loves.
Where do you feel at home?
Random & Rhyme 
I’ve thought about this a lot and it occurs to me that one place that really feels like home is on a boat in the ocean. I don’t mean an abstract notion of sailing off into the distance. I mean being on a boat for some purpose like fishing or a riding a ferry to another town. There’s something about the briny sea and the motion that makes me feel, very much, at home. Must be the Juneau in me.
I can relate. I think it is a thing that those of us lucky enough to live on the coasts get in our blood. Some of the best times of my life have been on a boat or by the water. Fishing with my grandfather in the sound, hanging at the beach with my friends, fishing on the river with my dad and a going away party on a boat a friend was living on tied at the end of the dock. The salty sea air, the seagulls squawking as they fly by, the yummy bounty from the sea – oysters, salmon, halibut, crab. Living on a houseboat is definitely on my list.