Day 15: Where is your happy place?

Today's blog prompts is courtesy of BlogHer's December NaBloPoMo blog prompts.  The theme this month is joy. 

"Where is your happy place?"

My happy place has never been one particular location.  It is more of a type of place, usually outdoors, often sparse or even barren.  I've always loved walking through the winter woods, visiting abandoned sand pits, roaming forgotten dirt roads, or picnicking in quiet graveyards.  Wide open places like the desert, the plains or the sea.  Places where I feeling willingly isolated.  These are the places that make me feel centered and peaceful.

I enjoy far away places, where effort must be made to get there.  Often this is simply setting a goal of walking to a place that is 15 or 20 miles from my home instead of driving there.  These pilgrimages are isolating in a different way because few people use walking as a primary form of transportation, particularly over great distances.  They are also very connecting.  Communities that one usually breezes through in a car I see up close.  I see the homes, the parks, the roadside trash and I also see, and often chat with, the people who live there. These adventures leave me feeling alive and connected.

I also find happiness right here.  In this chair, or anywhere that I am able to sit for an hour or a moment to write, create or just think.  This is where my body is still and my inner voice may find its way to the surface.  It is often calming, sometimes tumultuous and frustrating, but in the end leaves me feeling a sense of lightness and release.

I have many other happy places, the stage, the classroom, the library, my bed, across the table from a friend; I suppose that there are probably more.  That is a good thing...

Where is your happy place?