Pack lightly and hold the ones you love close.

We left home 4 weeks ago but funnily enough, we never left home at all. We have travelled from our adopted home, to the motherland - Africa, home to all mankind but less dramatically, homeland to my husband and me. Currently we call California home, but by now we have racked up homes in a number of places: Cape Town, New York City & Marin County and a few more.

For our children however, home currently is the place we left behind with their beds, toys dogs and friends. We have moved a lot over the past 30 days, changing locations numerous times, being embraced by two different families as well as fellow countrymen and countrywomen that our boys didn't know they had. Our youngest got a bit shaky at one point, yearning for his bedroom back in Marin. We were standing in a 130 year old stable that had been converted into a bedroom, it was freezing cold outside and cozy in an adventurous kind of way. We gathered the boys close, in a family hug-huddle of sorts and broke the news that it would be a long time until we would be back in our own home and beds. Along with that news came the number one lesson for those with gypsies for parents - the four walls we live in and all of our "stuff" isn't in fact that important and might very often stand in the way of a grand adventure. Pack lightly, hold the ones you love close and step out the door to see what wonder awaits.

Where? And why?

We are back doing what we love - the four of us, some essentials (cameras, surfboards, wetsuits, water colors and some good books) on the road through somewhere wide open and very beautiful. This time we have gone big - leaving our home and lives in Marin for a 6 month sabbatical in Southern Africa. It's a chance to catch our breaths, work on new material, reconnect African roots and family and step away for a time from all that which normally defines our days.

The ocean and mountains will be the boys schoolyard and their classroom will be wherever we are. Early mornings will be in order to capture a wave or sunrise or maybe to seek out a lion before it retires to the shade of a tree for the day. Rush hour, school bells, Monday to Friday won't exist for us, in this precious time that we have carved out for ourselves.

 It took months of double time to make it happen, but we are finally here on the southern tip of Africa, ready to go.