I Miss My Home

I miss my home. I miss everything about it. Provo has nothing of my home in it. My home has a smell. In the summer months you can smell the water in the air from the pipe. You can smell the exhaust from the tractors. The air smells of warm work. In fall, you can smell fresh cut grass anywhere you go. You can smell alfalfa, grain and later the straw--you can smell the difference. In winter, you can't smell anything at all. It is so cold that everything loses its scent. If you sniff, the inside of your nose will freeze, so even if there were a floating smell, you wouldn't know it. In spring, you smell rancidness. Dairy farms are thawing and the sewer ponds, too. I miss my home. My home looks like nothing else. The land is flat until you raise your eyes ever so slightly and all that's visible is a wall of mountains surrounding you in an oval. Behind those mountains are just more mountains. It is a bowl of mountains. A cup of mountains. An upside down hub cap used to feed the dog. You see a patch work quilt of fields separated not by stitching and batting, but by battered fences that sink somewhere in the middle, but neither neighbor will fix that part. You see animals. Cows, black, white, red and grey. You see horses. Well-trained quarter horses, sway-backed nags, powerful draft horses and shoddy Shetlands. You see trucks in the fields and tractors on the road. You see your neighbor, and you wave. I miss my home. My home has a sound. In winter, you hear snow plows scraping, sparking, grumbling, tearing down the road. You hear the snow fall. Piling up the banks. Piling on the roof, the cars, the cows, the fence posts. You hear the constant hum of tractors in the summer. You hear the che-che-che-che of the pipe's song. I'll never forget that sound. It was my bed-time song for 18 years. I miss my home.