"Surveys have been taken to assess strength of a local identification by determining how many locations in cities are immediately recognizable by residents. But there are other factors that make the home familiar; from the song of the cicadas at summer twilight to the violence of the prairie wind."  (Craig Miner, in The Wichita Reader)

I'm interested in those "other factors."  Like the red fox that crossed my path this morning. The familiar birdsong in the morning. The smell of rain on hot asphalt. The bright laser-sharp rays of morning sun through a pine forest. Even the regularity of dog-walkers, like Mike with Abby, or Tony with his aged canines. They all settle me here, make home familiar.

I picked up The Wichita Reader in Eighth Day Books on Douglas Avenue in Wichita, in a city of trees planted on the prairies of Kansas, home of Dorothy and Toto, where the wind always blows. When I go there, I go to Eighth Day, three floors of books in a white house and, oddly, feel at home. It's atmospherics: ink, dust, and mildew, I suppose, and tales of faraway places, and wise book tenders, and no one to rush me. I smile at the red head girl who who plies its lanes. I wished her home.

Eighth Day is The Wood Between the Worlds, you know, a place that opens to other places. Or it's Dorothy's spinning house that fell over the rainbow. I go there in my mind. But I'm dreaming again. The red fox moves away. The road bends uphill. Huffing, we climb. A woman stops and says, "Oh, he lives here. We see him all the time." I'm glad of it.