Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

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

This peaceful setting is a mature woodland in the making, tucked upriver away from the fray of the capital. It is also a burial ground, where interred ashes fertilize the soil in which young oak and beech trees grow. Sitting at this bench, I have been contemplating where home is aft

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