Birds gathered in the trees, singing resonant tunes in audience to the rising sun.

The air smelled thick of sap and pine and the faint breath of the sea, which bounded onto rocks and sent shivering sprays high into the air. I lost sight of the road behind me and followed a path into a dense pine forest.

The coniferous trees were green where blankets of snow did not encumber them. The deciduous trees were spindly and bare, sticking their skeletal arms into the air with just the smallest green buds forming on their fingertips in preparation for the commencement of spring. The snow was melting in most places but several patches of it still crunched beneath my boots as I walked.

After a time I came into an uneven, winding path that led down to a colossal mansion, which stood abandoned on the summit of a high hill that ended in a steep cliff and the crashing Atlantic Ocean below. It had a sprawling view of the bay and the wide-open ocean farther out. The house had been abandoned over a decade ago.

I walked down the hill alongside the cliff-edge path until I reached a tall mountain of stones and crumbling rocks, which stood on a peninsula that stretched out into the bay. I could hear the roar of the waves below and smelled the salt of the sea. Birds chirped and sang lullabies. The collective hum of the ocean made me feel like I was drifting in space, a world away. I sat on a bed of smooth quartz and took out some cheese and crackers and poured myself a piping hot cup of green tea. I lay on the quartz bed and all sounds became muffled by the surrounding wall of stone.

Everything grew quiet and calm. I drifted off past memories and regrets, past ambitions and resentments and fears, trying to forget what it was to feel anything. I closed my eyes and focused on the love in my heart, saying, “I am home.”