During a recent SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) local meeting, we had a session of ‘flash writing’ from a prompt. Here’s my prompt:

“Regardless of where you were born, where do you feel you’re from?” Taken from the book, 642 Tiny Things To Write About, by the San Francisco Writers Grotto, purchased at Watermark Books, Wichita, KS.

Here’s my answer, originally penned (I only use Bic soft feel medium pens) into my small, tan, soft-covered Moleskine notebook I carry everywhere:

“I was born, I feel, in Box Canyon, on Ghost Ranch, on the Piedra Lumbre Grant, on the Colorado Plateau. Late of the Genízaro, earlier of the Pueblo, who took over the ground from the Anasazi.

Somehow I only recharge when I step up onto that last boulder in the Box part. I lay on my back, arched, with my eyes closed. I listen to the canyon wrens, the raven’s burring call, the soft percussion of the seeping water.

I wear both blue jeans and moccasins. I wear both a straw cowboy hat and a string bag called a bilum, which I’ve brought from the other side of the globe. I have a bicycle parked at the trailhead, a camper in the campground, and a stack of books waiting for me.

I’m from the many, many worlds I’ve read into existence, but I’m truly home in Box Canyon.”