As I set up my ground station on the edge of the concrete terrace at my Mom’s house in Zaraće (a small bay in the village of Gdinj, island Hvar, Croatia) I could feel the concrete emanating heat accumulated over the day. The prior evening a small group of us (friends and family) had ventured out to the warm rocks at night to watch for the Perseids - and we saw several meteors, sometimes so numerous they seemed to speak to each other in the sky. One very powerful meteor passed from 90 degrees above us in a long orange streak to the horizon. Gdinj (and Zaraće) is an origin point for my family - one that stretches back for generations on my mother’s side, through the Čurin family who settled in Gdinj, grew lavendar, cultivated olive trees for oil, and fished in the sea. I remember my Deda (grandfather) waking up at dawn to collect the fish of the day from nets that had been laid out by hand the evening before. It wasn't so long ago that the only way to travel from Gdinj, on the top of the island, to Zaraće at the sea, was by mule or donkey along a narrow dirt path. It wasn't so long ago (only last summer) that I came to Gdinj for my Baba Albina's funeral, an event that drew the whole village, and with people driving from as far away as Belgrade. In the local cemetary, mom and I each read a small passage, and my Mom also read a poem by Vesna Parun. It is always intense for me to be (back) here. I want to forget about the practicalities of life - how to get clean water (the water 'cisterns' aren't always the safest to drink from), how to get food, who to go for ‘kavu’ (coffee) with. I want to just lie without a towel or goggles or rock-shoes on the pale, jagged, karst rocks and stare at the sea. Indeed I have spent so many of my summers doing exactly this, I wonder if my small bones are laced with limestone, seawater, algae, olive, lavender.