Homes Away from Home

photos and some stories from a brief visit to Catalunya and Ireland

I spent 16 years of my life in Catalunya, and in many ways it will always be home. I have family there, there are gardens and trees and squatted houses I have tended to, streets that I have seen burning… and there’s something about a mountain, a sea, that becomes a part of you. When you live in the foothills of a mountain, when every day you smell a sea on the wind, that mountain, that sea, become a part of you.

When Raechel got invited to speak at an academic conference in Dublin, we didn’t have much time, but we had half the trip paid for. I’ve been missing Catalunya, and I think living there again could easily be in our future, and the first time I ever asked R about countries she wanted to travel to, Ireland shared the top spot on her list: this August it became the first land we got to explore together, new to each of us.