My favorite city would have to be the lack of a city. Farms. Forests. Deserts. These are the places I always fall in love with. I was raised in a town of fewer than 2,000 people, and even then, my happiest times were spent outside of that town, on my grandmother's farm or with my friends who lived out in the country. Even though I never had an easy life, I'm grateful for the rural aspects of my childhood. My two best friends Kerri and Jenny lived on roads that were part of the same "country block" my grandmother still lives on. In a "country block" in the Midwest, roads are about a mile apart with field or forest making up the squares in-between. Where we lived, the roads with names or numbers were paved. The roads that had a number followed by a letter were a gravel road off the paved road; for example, Eighteenth Road made up the south border of my grandmother's farm, and 18B was a gravel road parallel to that road.

Kerri and Jenny and I would make excursions to each other's houses all day. I would ride a bike to Jenny's, and Jenny would ride her pony Buttercup while I biked alongside to Kerri's, where there would be enough horses and ponies for us to each have a ride. I can still picture each of these horses and remember their quirks as if they were my own-Shamrock, the gentle paint; Peanut, who was chestnut colored and too much horse for me to handle; Lady, a grey and black dapple who spooked whenever there was farm machinery in a field; and Sugar, a buff-colored pony I always wished was my own. I can't imagine living a childhood in a city any more than I can imagine a childhood without snow.

I've lived in cities. They're nice places to visit; they have museums and theaters and many other things that my city friends consider "culture," but I don't see how they can feel like home, and home is anywhere you can write. I prefer to do my writing in the quiet. The solitude. Writing should be a lonely endeavor.  That's why so many writers have had to escape society to think. To write. To just be.

My officemate when I taught in Florida was a typical New Yorker. Not a day went by when she didn't say, "If you want to write, we need to get you to New York." I was always horrified. I'm glad to know she was wrong.  I've landed myself as a writer where I'm supposed to be-Pendleton, Oregon-a town of 16,000 that once a year swells to 50,000 for the annual Pendleton Round-Up. I can even catch glimpses of the college's horses out my office window. My publisher can be in London. We have email these days. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up somewhere even more "un-city-fied." There's always Alaska.