Once upon a time, I lived in a small town. The wider world was a very big place that I had only heard stories about. Cities were things I saw on telvision and daydreamed about running off to, but thery weren't real to me. The internet was in it's infancy - almost mythical in it's remove form the things I saw around me everyday. My local library subscribed to Wired, and I downed every issue as it came in, in spite of the fact that I didn't even own a computer, much less a modem.

I'm still that 16 year old kid, sitting in a rural county library, dreaming of science fiction made real. At the same time, I'm 19, and surfing the web for real, thinking that I'd just found the biggest, most anacharic library in existance. I'm 21, and leaving my small town without a backward glance.

Chasing the dreams of my youth, I found myself distanced form the small things I once took for granted. There are no katydids or crickets singing outside my wondow. I can no longer smell the baking bread scent of parched grass seeds on the lawn. Cars pass my apartment at all hours of the day and night, and starlight cannot reach past the light pollution haze.

I miss the world I knew I decade ago. There was more wonder, and nature was just outside my door. I keep hold of that wonder, or I try. I look for nature working it's way past the highways and under the rushing cars. I notice when I pass a stand of Queen Anne's Lace, even if I'm doing 60; and someday I promise myself that I'll live out in the boonies again, and be able to look up at a night sky and see every star.

The dreams of my childhood got me here, and the dreams of my (relative) maturity will bring me back to where I started.