Fifty years had passed since he last visited the valley. He pictured himself here, overlooking a meadow of wildflowers where people played frisbee. Music washed through the trees, and the smell of pot tangled with campfire smoke in a hazy cloud stretching across the scene.
It was a peaceful place filled with people from all walks of life camping out for a week, a month, or the entire summer into fall. He had arrived on the trip east and sadly admitted this was its final journey in his van—a well-worn vehicle that demanded constant attention. But it provided him with shelter as the rain fell, sinking deeper into the mud and its final resting place.
He walked the path that led to the meadow, a slow journey for him now that age was catching up at a rapid pace. He got through tangles of vines and overgrowth, eventually seeing something in the distance. A faded shade of blue, interred in weeds and left to be forgotten. It was his van.
He reached out and touched it, as one might an old dog, softly and with deep feeling. The inside was strewn with old beer cans and assorted things like a threadbare blanket covered with moss and a pair of cutoff jeans he remembered as being the only thing he wore back then. They had almost turned to faded blue ashes like everything does in forgotten decades.
He had seen enough and slowly made his way back to the trailhead where his grandson waited. Seen enough pops, he asked. He thought about his question for a minute, then turned to him and said he had seen his past in all its glory. He saw old friends and bonfires, fireflies in mason jars, and listened to a hundred guitars. He tasted the strawberry wine and spat out seeds from a joint. His mind was open again as countless memories came alive one last time." Let's go home his grandson said, to which he replied I am home.
Mike 2026 
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