Author: Sean Keener

My 169,680 Square Mile Home #indie30


This is part of BootsnAll’s 30 Days of Indie Travel project, a daily blogging challenge with a prompt for every day in November 2011. Check out the prompt at the bottom of this post to find out how you can participate!

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow” –Lin Yutang

What is home? To me, home isn’t a house I grew up in or a specific city, or even a state… it’s an entire region of the United States, usually deemed “the Pacific Northwest”. We moved around a bit as a child, so by the time I left home for college, I’d lived in 11 different cities from the Seattle area to Eastern Washington, to central Oregon, staying an eternity of four years in Bend, Oregon.
This concept of “home” never struck me as unusual, until I started feeling like a compulsive liar when telling the same person “Oh, I grew up there”, but referencing a different city depending on the week or conversation. So these days if I’m asked where I’m from [originally], I say “all over the Northwest”, or short answer, “I’m from Bend, Oregon.”
I’m fascinated by people who’s “home” is also a house (in the actual physical sense of the word), in that they can go back to it and visit family and have so many memories and years tied up in one space. At certain times growing up, that’s what I wished I had, but on the other hand I love that moving a lot gave me a case of early onset wanderlust, a desire to make things happen NOW (as who knows where we’ll be next year), a lover of change and a curious nature. This is also a reason I think it’s fantastic when people travel with their kids.

at home on the Oregon Coast

How ’bout you? Where is home to you?
30 Days of Indie Travel Project: How to Participate
We’re inviting bloggers from around the world (that means you, too!) to join us in a daily blogging effort designed to reflect on how our travel experiences over the last year – or whenever – have shaped us and our view of the world. Bloggers can follow the prompts as strictly or loosely as they like, interpreting them in various ways and responding via text, photos or video posted on their own blogs.
We’ll share some of our favorites via Twitter and Facebook throughout November, as well as a round-up article at the end of the month, so if you’re playing along make sure to let us know – use the #indie30 hashtag on Twitter, and link to the 30 Days of Indie Travel page in your post so we’ll be able to find it.
Find out all of the 30 Days of Indie Travel blogging prompts so far – it’s never too late to join in the fun!

Prompt #13: HOME

For some people, no matter how much they love traveling, there’s always no place like home. Other travelers make their homes wherever they happen to be. Tell us about your home – where is it and why do you consider it your home?
Tools and inspiration:  Check out these seven signs you might want to settle down