My trip to Utah has ended. I’m at my gate in Atlanta concourse D after taking the red eye from Las Vegas. I’ll soon be on a shuttle home to Blacksburg from the Roanoke airport. In 24 hours, I’ll be back in the Atlanta airport on my way down to Florida to move our daughter home from college. I’m exhausted but my heart is full.

I’m going on a couple of hours of airplane sleep, so I’m not super lucid right now. I do know for sure, after a week in the Utah landscape with my best friends from childhood, that experiencing awe and spending time with people I love feed my soul. I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to go west and spend time with my girlfriends under the blue sky and among the red rocks of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada.

We couldn’t get enough of the sandstone formations, the visible evidence of earth colliding via plate tectonics, and the wonder of water carving rock into gorges and canyons. Water is soft and rock is hard. And yet. The softness wears the hardness down.

Every day, I was amazed by the beauty around me. After I ride with our daughter back to Virginia from Florida, I’ll have a chance to relax at home in our garden before heading on another adventure to enjoy a different kind beauty: the beauty of Paris.