A whirlwind month of time spent with all my families, elephants, rhinos, trekking through a forbidden kingdom, meeting a king, and, finally, saying goodbye to a country to which, in the words of Tolstoy, I lost my heart. Two weeks before I was to return home, the very thought of leaving Nepal made me feel like I couldn't breathe. Then I spent a week in Upper Mustang, a region pushed up into Tibet and still with a huge Tibetan influence. Life was unreal up there: a combination of the dry landscape of the Southwestern US (down to the detail of ancient walled cave dwellings), medieval villages surrounded by the greenest irrigated fields, and the prayer flags, gompas, monks, and rimpoches of Tibetan Buddhism. We happened to be up there when one of the four most important people in Buddhism today (I couldn't exactly explain his position; each person asked provided a different answer) was visiting, so we watched the villages' various preparations and then saw him during a long-life ceremony. Finally, after the time in Upper Mustang, I was exhausted by the long, fast, high hike, and ready to come home. Something like forty-eight hours after flying out of Kathmandu as I blew it a kiss and told Bouddha I would return, I arrived home. Home - the word is putting a smile on my face as I write. I'm staring out the window at such a beautiful Vermont summer day of clouds and black-eyed susans, wind and, way down the valley, my beloved Mount Ascutney. Now is time for me to be here.