Greetings from a peaceful woodland near the River Thames west of London

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence through which NPR’s worldwide staff shares moments from their lives and work around the globe.

If I would had my microphone with me, you’d hear the brilliant coloratura of willow warblers and chiffchaffs, the resonant mezzo counterpoint of blackbirds, the smooth rustling of leaves within the breeze and the odd jumbo coming in to land at Heathrow — the sounds of the Thames valley and the reassuringly acquainted soundtrack to my childhood summer time afternoons, minus the roar of Concorde jets.

This peaceable setting is a mature woodland within the making, tucked upriver away from the fray of the capital. It’s also a burial floor, the place interred ashes fertilize the soil through which younger oak and beech bushes develop. Sitting at this bench, I’ve been considering the place house is after years of residing abroad — a query that many worldwide reporters ask themselves after a beat or two.

The reply is never brief, nevertheless it strikes me how having the ability to return to see household is the privilege of peace, even as soon as they’ve handed. It’s the privilege of having the ability to take go away of family members and afford them dignity. As colleagues — far braver than I’m — witness how the horrors of warfare take many hundreds of lives and deprive households of having the ability to mark their deaths correctly, I’m conscious of how fortunate I’m to have this bench beneath a cathedral-like cover of bushes to which I can return repeatedly.

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