Finding Home in Nature - Montana and California offer nature's bounty to welcome

Sunset in California, along the Pacific, isa leisurely affair, often with fast-moving clouds.

What is home? Two places capture the hearts of our traveling team

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. -- Stephanie Perkins

STORY By CHRISTENE MEYERS

PHOTOS By BRUCE KELLER

"The Carpe Diem Kids"

Living between two places might seem like a life divided, but for us, it has become a life deeply connected. The conduit is nature.

Though Montana and California offer vastly different landscapes -- one defined by rugged mountains and quiet forests, the other by rolling waves and sunlit shores -- we feel at home in both. The thread that ties them together isn’t buildings or routines. It is nature itself. Whether we’re standing beneath towering pines or walking along the coastline, there’s a familiar rhythm in the wind, light, and open space that reminds us we belong.

 A contented seal enjoys Southern California beach life.

IF HOME IS where the heart is, then our home and heart are mobile.

Home is, for us, deeply connected to trees, water and sunsets. Gorgeous sunsets on the California coast and over the rocky cliffs of the Beartooth Mountains.

We need to be surrounded by favorite people, the natural world and "our stuff" -- paintings, books, pianos, gardens, bird feeders, theater Playbills. A couple favorite cooking pots.  A tea strainer.  A pair of porcelain coffee mugs made by my potter brothers. A photo of my mother playing violin and Keller's mother painting -- we have those in both homes.

The feeders are attracting a mix of bright birds.

Finding home in nature

Finding "home in nature" is knowing my way around a kitchen and locating the ginger, dill and green tea.  Or hanging the finch and hummingbird feeders and having my first customers buzz my head and dip for a snack before I get back inside the house.

HOME IS the sweet song of birds, the sheen on the Rimrocks north of Billings, the looming San Diego skyline, the storybook Oceanside harbor up the coast.

Home means egrets in the sand, eagles in the pines. And trees. Here in California, the palms, Torrey Pines and eucalyptus form a comfort zone.

IN MONTANA it's the aspen, cottonwoods and pines.

Both places have distinct smells -- musky earth from recent rain and my garden marigolds in Montana, salty sea air and the patio orchids in California.

The trees and Mediterranean brush of southern California.

But always trees.  Without these, I'd be rootless!

Herman Hesse loved the rustle of trees, "when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts."  He felt that trees have "long thoughts," and that because they generally live longer than we do, "they are wiser than we are."

Home also has to do with a feeling of safety. For me, the beauty of the natural world has long calmed me, producing a sense of

The picturesque Oceanside Harbor welcomes the writer home, from another home in beloved Montana.

security and absence of anxiety.

Ultimately, the feeling of being "home" and "at home" is an amalgam of emotions, comforts and connections dating back to our infancy.

Being greeted by a loved one -- partner, sibling, parent -- also signals "home."

FAMILIAR SIGHTS -- for me, the mountains and ocean -- welcome me, make me feel grounded, safe and comforted.  The sea and hills welcome me and confirm that I'm home.

I'm lucky to have two places that make me feel happy and connected to nature.

Cookie and Keller enjoy a sail up the California coast her first day back.

Home is the wide open spaces of Montana, surrounded by aspen and fir, meadowlarks and robins, in the shadow of the Beartooths.

Home is also a favorite beach, for a barefoot stroll beneath palms. On the Oceanside shore of Southern California, dolphins and whales vie for attention. Osprey nest on top of light fixtures and telephone poles in both our states.

RATHER THAN looking for deer, antelope and bears, I'm sailing past sunning seals and into the Pacific.

Both places offer abundant delights from the natural world -- daily doses of extraordinary beauty.

The first few days of "being home" are always rewarding, whether I'm coming or going, whether my destination is California or Montana.

A stop at Queen Califia's Magical Garden spells "home" in California.

MY AUGUST BIRTHDAY revels are fully underway, with parties and presents in Montana, then more awaiting my arrival  in San Diego.

I'm taking only a few days for this California visit, to connect with friends, partake of a favorite Jazzercise class, go sailing and take in a few plays and concerts.

This week's line-up includes a Lyle Lovett concert tonight at Humphreys By the Bay, a beloved venue right on the ocean, which we'll feature in next week's post.

There's a play Friday, "In the Heights," downtown at the Lyceum, in Horton Plaza. An opportunity to view one of the prettiest skylines in the country.

San Diego's palm trees and skyline also say "home".  

And there is time for a sunset at our favorite cocktail and appetizer spot, La Jolla Shores.

A QUICK TRIP to Harrah's Rincon Resort and Casino restores my gambler's soul and, for a change, I leave a few dollars ahead.

Time, too, for a picnic at Queen Califia's Magical Garden, that enticing artful sculpture circle in Escondido's Kit Carson Park.

HOW LUCKY we are to have two nature driven places in which we feel comfortable.

When we're back in Montana in a few days, home is cattle and deer, the Stillwater River, rafters instead of the surfers, birds and sailboats of southern California. Both places shelter us with trees -- palms and eucalyptus in SoCal, fir, pine and aspen in the northern Rockies.

THE GYPSY in me loves travel -- mulling over brochures to choose a new destination or return to a favorite place.

But home will always be two distinct and different places -- the wilds of Montana and the beaches and hills of southern California.  Here, in these two places tied together forever in our hearts, we come and go -- leaving home and coming home, content whichever direction we're going!

COMING SOON:  A sold-out concert by gifted singer songwriter Lyle Lovett is one of the enticements at Humphreys Concerts By the Bay, for Birthday Girl Cookie.  Humphreys is a popular seaside performance venue which lured the writer "home" to San Diego from her rural Montana writing studio. Plus we'll look at Montana theater, Egypt's changes and Brazil.

Lyle Lovett is one of Cookie's favorite singers.

Remember to explore, learn and live. Check us out weekly at: www.whereiscookie.com