What is a place you love and why?

Once again, this prompt comes from Rachel Greig’s website. What is a place I love? I love so many different types of places, this one is hard to narrow down. Chicago is high on my list, as well as Inverness, but so is Washington Island, and even Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park and Pike Island, which is part of Fort Snelling State Park. I love them all for different reasons, because Chicago is my first big city love, Inverness is a big place that feels slow and personal, Washington Island is hopefully my future home, and the state parks, well, they stand in for all the places I feel close to nature.

If I have to choose one place to say is my most favorite place, I would have to say anywhere that I am with people around whom I can be utterly and totally myself. Whether that is in a huge city, like Chicago where I can get lot in the noise, bustle, and confusion, or whether it is in the woods on an island where I can distantly hear my heartbeat between the birds chirping and the waves crashing on the shore. I guess mostly what I want to talk about is my experiences in the places I love and the people with whom I have spent time there.

When my wife and I first started realizing we were interested in each other in more than a platonic way, we went to Chicago to see an art exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute. I remember being elated to feel warmth of her simply standing next to me as we looked at so many Van Goghs and so many Gaugins. When her arm would brush up against mine, I felt so comfortable and finally at home, a feeling that never has gone away through any ups or downs we may have had. I feel like calling it butterflies is cheesy, but when I think about her and this trip, I remember how new and beautiful our love was and it makes me feel nostalgic and at peace.

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I guess, after not publishing this when I wrote it and when I look back at this several months later, I recognize that every place I list in the first paragraph is somewhere I love to be with my wife, so really she is my favorite place. There is no other place I’d rather be than with her, doing anything, wherever.