That itchy foot might mean it's time to go away somewhere new . . . or time to go back somewhere . . .

but it’s astounding how often the foot grows itchy, one way or another.

It isn’t even that I absolutely need to go anywhere physically when this would-be rash attacks, for I have spent some time honing my skills at inner travel as well.  But don’t get me wrong, my passport is always kept in my shoulder holster if the opportunity for actual travel should arise serendipitously or otherwise. Itchy feet should not long be ignored.

Between those blessed moments of existing in another world, meanwhile, I tend to my whispering wanderlust by quietly reliving past journeys in my heart and plotting out how the next ten or twenty jaunts might best go–and where.

Some of the time the yearning is stronger than just a wish for a little visit to someplace that’s not where I live and spend my time on a regular basis. It’s homesickness. There are places I’ve been lucky to visit that ever after I will pine for as though they were my birthplace, my bloodline, my true north. You’ll be hearing about those along the way. The heart-rending gorgeousness of many deeply differing places and their people and culture and food and terrain and building styles–those can inspire, too, a pure, down to earth ache to go back just because.

Above is such a little green reverie that I revisit many a time that brings me back to a lyrical time my husband and I spent in Panama a few years back. Part of the beauty of it was being introduced to the fantastic diversity and poetic complexity of a country I knew nothing of prior to visiting there. No surprise I’d find innumerable romantic notions arising from those velvety verdant hillside farms draped along the slopes of a sleeping volcano. Nor from the casual elegance of a coffee plantation-turned-B & B where we could order a privately catered supper at our cottage and sit dining off of old Limoges while looking out at the misty parade of constant rainbows over the valley below our windows. A seemingly out-of-the-way farm whose greenhouses shelter over 2400 varieties of orchids alone: can this really be a place on old Earth? The capital city had its own tremendous and colorful pull on us, with its fantastic blend of ruined ancient, restored colonial and glossy contemporary architecture, its cosmopolitan blend of business and culture and exquisite parks and marvelous food. The soundtrack of birds that seemed delightfully exotic to me and the array of abundant tropical flora filled every space between the people and events that kept us happy and eager to dance through the next day of pleasures in the sweet concoction that is Panama.

Lest you be misled by any of the foregoing paeans to the Panamanian countryside, Ciudad de Panama is far from alone in being a citified locale I can love. “Some of my best friends are cities.” So after a good wallow in the vanilla-scented sugary flora of the remoter portions of the land, I’m quite happy to head to the big city to luxuriate in another sort of wonderfulness altogether. Hear that, townies? Hide behind the transit station! Run for the barricades! My foot is just beginning to twitch again . . .

Shall it be a coastal city this time, or . . . ?