As I write this, we’re sitting in the airplane at Heathrow, about to take off for the US.  For home and the end of a wild, wonderful, eye-opening, strange, and sometimes stressful year.

They call the door close announcement.  Seatbelts.  Computers off.

Leaving Britain is a particularly strange feeling.  In so many ways, it feels close to home — not just the (mostly) shared language and history, but just the feel of the place.  The green and the trees hearken back to my earlier life, growing up in Kentucky and Indiana or living in the Northeast.  The intermittent misty and sunny weather that remains temperate through the summer evokes echos of the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Rockies, where I came of age.

More than that, it has been a year of personal growth and change.  I have had some excellent research interactions, of course, and have learned a great deal scientifically.  I had some valuable time to think and experiment and hack a bit myself.  I have a stronger sense of some directions to explore.

But much more than that, it has been a year of learning about the greater world and our place in it.  History, art, culture, language, politics, religion.  Food, fashion, fun.  I feel that I have a fuller or richer sense of the tides of culture.  Countries all face the same problems, but different countries resolve them differently, and we both have some better senses of what the spectrum of choices is.

In flight, now, the great steel flying machine boring a hole through the sky above Ireland, heading for the North Atlantic.

Moments and memories flit through me…

Arriving in Spain eleven months ago, now.  Confusion and panic, plunged into a world we didn’t fit into, uncertain if we could even pay for our apartment.

Snow in London, paralyzing the city.  Two days later, a train through the fairy-gilded countryside.  Sunlight gleaming on snow in the trees and on the fields; a Dickensian scene.

Treading the streets of Hardy, Halley, and Hawking; Tolkien, Carroll, and Lewis.

A whirl of castles, fortresses, and palaces: El Escorial, El Palacio Real, El Alcazar de Segovia, Alhambra, Pembrokeshire, Warwick, the Tower of London, Hampton Court, Versailles, Castle Howard, Schloss Marienburg, Earl’s Palace, Edinburgh.  Centuries of might, power, prestige, wealth, fear, and blood.  Some standing still proud and strong, some crumbling and struggling against tides of time and entropy.  All showpieces, now, for adventurers, curiosity seekers, history fanatics, and tourists.

Snippets of history assembling.  Fitting together growing fragments of the great mosaic.

The sense of wonder and excitement as cafés and headlines in Madrid were filled with Obama’s victory.

The awe of touching stones laid down a thousand years ago by the cathedral-builders…

… or laid down two millennia ago by the Romans, as they grasped the world in their palms.

… or five millennia ago by the now-nameless neolithic farmers, circumscribing the heavens with stone.

… or eight millennia ago by the mesolithic hunter-gatherers, laying their treasured dead into barrows for reasons now lost in entropy and age.

Plays in London’s West End and English-language movies at the foreign film theatre in Madrid.

The ocean surging against cliffs in Scotland and Wales; mist above the sea.  The sea, the sea, the sea, stretching out before us, a reminder of how small these islands really are, for all of their deep history and vast influence.

The whirl and bustle of the great mercados of Madrid, a foodie’s heaven, if only you can speak enough Spanish to order the jamon.

The decaying Victorian majesty and grunge of the London Tube, its subterranean labyrinth inviting visions of fairies, just beyond sight in the hidden recesses, driving the trains, or sometimes not, at their whim.

Jamon and pisto manchego.  Fish and chips at the pub.  Chocolate con churros, merluza, cochinillo, cocido, and the best calamari in Madrid.  Steak and kidney pie, cumberland sausages, scones and cream tea, Victoria sponge cake. Ordering Indian and Chinese for delivery.

The gleaming modern efficiency of the Madrid Metro, jewel of Madrid’s recent public works and their charming, self-aggrandizing pride in it. Posters of the Sphinx or the Statue of Liberty peering excitedly down the steps of a Metro station: “El Metro que todos quisieren tener.”

The green, green, green of Britain.  Trees and grass and flowers and rolling farmlands.  Even in the concrete jungle of London, the locals have striven to set aside greenspace.  And the greenery fights for itself: grass springing forth from every crack or crevice in the concrete, moss or ivy spreading over every wall, unless vigilantly fought back.

The grand, tree-lined boulevards of central Madrid, evoking Nineteenth Century splendor and imperial power.  The arid clime, so achingly reminiscent of Albuquerque and the desert Southwest of the US.

The digital map informs us that we are over the coast of Greenland now.  Halfway to Chicago, or thereabout.

But, really, what has mattered most are the people.

The kind and enthusiastic woman across the courtyard from us in Madrid.  Discussions in our halting Spanish about sharing the clothes line and the state of the weather, and her pledge of friendship on the day we left Spain.

The supervisor at the Manor House Tube station in London, who cheerfully sorted us out, from helping us get to our house in the first place, to helping us find our way to the New Year’s celebrations in the city.

The Nicaraguan expat we met in Spain who hated the US for its role in the Contra-Sandanista civil war that destroyed his country and his family.

The Kosovan taxi-driver in London who loved the US for its role in the Kosovo war and stopping the horrors of ethnic cleansing.

Elaborate Christmas lunch at the warm and welcoming house of my postdoc’s family.

The brusque but secretly friendly proprietor of the corner store near our place in London, who just smiled when we returned for the fourth time in a day for something forgotten, saying “It’s ok — this is your store.”

The delightful B&B hosts in Pembrokeshire, who welcomed us into their house and shared their joy in Wales with us.

Gaming with friends back in the US — a touch of familiarity and comfort for expats far from home.

The shopkeeper in Spain who sold us pillow cases when we had no Spanish whatsoever, who cheerfully passed the dictionary back and forth with us to help us through the transaction and who, at the end, complimented our Spanish, “¡Su español es muy bueno!”.

A group of hostellers in Orkney, with whom we stayed up too late dissecting the state of the world and the best travel destinations on five continents.

And all of the beautiful, wonderful, warm friends we found in London: Writers and musicians and gamers and engineers and hackers and teachers.  Who, most of all, made London feel like home, at least for a time.

Over the North Atlantic again, closing in on the coast of Canada.  The flight attendant brings us a snack of fruit and crackers and lovely stinky cheese.  We marvel a bit at the luxury of flying business class.

I titled this post “Leaving the Shire, Mr. Frodo” because I can empathize with some of Sam’s feelings.  For one thing, the echos of Middle Earth are all over Britain — you can see Tolkien’s roots in the thatched roofs and hedge-rows, the towers and spires, the barrows and standing stones.

But it’s a deeper feeling than that.  Sam was leaving home for the first time — first setting foot beyond his native lands, starting out on a grand adventure that would change him deeply.  We are returning from a grand adventure — admittedly not as grand, nor as hazardous, as Sam’s — but I can feel some of the wistfulness and conflicts that he did.  Transitions are potent.  We return to familiar places and people that we love, but we leave behind fascinating places and discoveries and new people to love.

But more opportunities to return, to visit new friends, and to explore further.

The road goes ever on…

Passing over the Great Lakes now.  We are close.  They feed us again.

It has been such a strange year.  There were plenty of stresses, from discovering the failure modes of the international finance system, to wandering lost at Barajas airport in search of our cats, to staying in touch with friends and colleagues five thousand miles away, to planning the next bit of local travel and tourism, to trying to pound a new language into our aged cortices by exposure and sheer force of will.  At times, we were exhausted by the overwhelming intricacy of life maintenance when your home isn’t really your home and every transaction has to be coordinated across two continents and up to five countries.

Landing gear down.  Seats and tray tables up.  Machines off.

But it has also been an incredibly… Fulfilling/enriching/educational/exciting/exploratory/wonderful/creative/social year.  All wrapped up in complex feelings — joy, loss, excitement, fatigue.  The sense of our perspectives stretching, like muscles, sometimes a little bit too far.  Homesickness for two homes.

Landing in Chicago; back in the US.

We are home.