You leave your hometown thinking it’s too small, then spend years trying to explain it to people.

Distance changes what a place is to you. Up close it is a limit, a set of things you cannot do and people who already know your business. From a few hundred miles off it becomes specific: the particular bridge, the way everyone says a certain word, the one diner.

Write the paragraph now, while you are still inside it. Three details a stranger would not guess, the kind that will be hard to recall in ten years. It costs ten minutes and you will not get this version back.