The familiarity of Home

Home. How do you define it? Most of the time I think of home I am thinking of the house that I live in with my family in Colorado. But I just finished reading a book set in the mountains of Kentucky and it really made me think of home. My home in the context of my ROOTS. Who I am. Where I came from. The descriptions of the sounds of water flowing in the creek, the smell of the woods, the smell of the rich earth after a good rain, the greeness of Kentucky that says its alive and the rotting smells that say its dying. These are a part of my soul. It has been many years since I have lived in Kentucky but it still my Home. I was struck by the emotions this book evoked in me. A longing for a place near the woods. A longing for the rich garden earth and a garden planted, tended and grown with my own hands. The simplicity of a life closer to God’s creations not in the big city far from the things that are real. How can a person feel such and affinity for a place so long removed from their day to day life? Would I even appreciate it if I were there? Or just ignore it as I do the richness of my current life and the land in and sky in Colorado. Is the nostalgia of something lost or left behind what makes it so special in a persons mind?