It's always sad to be at the end of a trip. As I write this I'm sitting in an airport hotel in Toronto dealing with the effects of jet-lag. This morning we pack up one last time and make the relatively short flight back home to Charlottetown where we will resume our normally scheduled lives.

Travel has become a necessity for us (Becky and I). It is like a drug that we need regular doses of to keep us stimulated and grounded. Travel, for us, began by wanting to see new things. It quickly changed from purely taking it all in to us wanting to "be" in and of a place.

We are starting to see travel as a mindset. Pico Iyer's travel essay simply called "Why We Travel" has been formative for me in the past few years.

I take great comfort that by seeing travel as more than the act of going or being in a place other than home it does not, in fact, end. Iyer, a beautiful writer, says it better than I could ever dream of:

...travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.