The sweetest homecoming.

I’ve reunited with my wife and daughter. We have returned home. All is well once more.

For those of you playing along at home, my wife and daughter were invited down to Florida for the majority of last week in order to celebrate the birth of a new family member on my wife’s side. It was the longest we’ve ever been separated since we began our relationship as a long-distance one. It was also the longest I’ve ever gone being separated from my daughter, as I had to hold down the fort here at home.

The week was, to put it mildly, hellish. There were some bright spots of course – and I have to take the time to personally thank each and every one of you who helped me keep my sanity over the past week. You know who you are; thank you from the bottom of my heart. It was often the only thing keeping me from stark raving madness as the silence closed in around me.

Finally the week ended, and before I knew it I was circling the Arrivals terminal at LaGuardia, craning my neck for the sight of my erstwhile family. At last, my wife emerged from the bowels of LGA’s JetBlue arrivals gate, pushing the stroller holding my daughter, and our reunion was blissful and sweet. The following day we fled the horrors of Long Island and the metro NY area like our hair was on fire, and it was with joyful abandon that we arrived back in the Adirondacks late last afternoon.

Last evening, the Park welcomed us back in the only way six million acres of protected land possibly could: a symphony of nature. The stars sparkled overhead, mirrored by a vast sea of fireflies lighting up the night, as the owls hooted out the melody of the evening. The rubber-band pluck of the bullfrogs down by the lake ebbed and swelled in counterpoint, and the beat was kept by the constant chirp of the crickets. There were no car horns, no drone of jet engines, no acrid exhaust fumes tickling the back of your throat with its black, gnarled fingers, no vile press of humanity jostling each other – just pure, blessed peace as my daughter slept the sleep of the just and my wife sat next to me on the back porch. “Welcome home,” the world was saying to us. We were welcome, indeed.