Way Stations

Using Street View, I took a trip back to the neighborhood of my childhood. Navigating up and down the street I examined all the details: the yards that I use to play in, the curbs that I jumped off on my bike and skateboard, the bushes I used for hide and seek, and the house where the old man lived who would yell at us and chase us off his property.

This same neighborhood, city, state, area of the country is the where I so deparately desired to leave my senior year of high school; convinced that East Coast was where I needed to be. Now, I look back with nostalgia as I virtually navigate my route to the neighborhood elementary school, park, and friend's house.

Unexplainably, I seem to be perpetually drawn back to these way stations of my past; way stations that the Degel Machaneh Ephraim taught mirror the way stations of the Jewish people as they made there way across the desert until they arrived in Eretz Yisroel.

"These journeys are recorded in the Torah in order to teach us the right path to follow in our lives, and that all of our journeys are holy and pure."

How many more way stations are there left along my path? How much further is the final destination?