This summer in Minnesota is already distanced from me in ways I don’t like. In miles and climate and that feeling of homeness (whatever that means). But however long I live in New Mexico, whenever and wherever I’m out in the world, I will never miss it in quite that same childish/childlike (?) way as Koochiching County, Minnesota and our own spot in the northwoods.

This time I visited the ‘old place,’ my childhood home a few times and have already posted more than a few 2026 photos … looking much like 2025 (and further back) pictures, except to my eyes! Well, that’s not exactly true, I have a hard time telling the difference as well. But my heart knows, I say to myself. It’s true though, the last visits out home on any trip north is ever more fraught… ‘will it be my last? Nah, of course I’ll be back. For sure? Well, perhaps not for absolute sure. Then, let’s stay another moment so I can be sure to have imprinted the image for a future mind’s eye moment. Done and done and done, taking photos all the while.

Here then. The first post from the final two visits out to ‘the old place’ (or ‘out home’, interchangeable expressions) from August 2026. There are too many for even a single post intended to be viewed mostly by me in a future blog book. I am choice-averse when it comes to photos…as everyone who’s ever viewed a Time and Place post will have noticed long ago.

I thought about topical groupings like trees, big views, broken house but have just decided to mosey along in real time through each visit.

And below: the interior of the home in which I grew up. Humble (but ever so fine in spirit) from the beginning. I always enjoy my visits, never finding them depressing, as the house and I (almost exactly the same age) exit the planet creakily, but somewhat interesting in our gradual demise, together.