One of My Favorite Places

Those of you familiar with my early work might recognize this area from SPECTRAL CROSSINGS. We were living five houses up the street to the west of the point where this video was shot when I wrote it, along with both SPECIES books, ZERO, and the lion’s share of GOD’S END. There used to be narrow paths through the cottonwoods and willows that wound back into the cattails. I remember finding a turtle with my kids under the bough of a strangely shaped pine tree when we were trying to weather a furious rainstorm. I later used that same bough to nail various unsavory objects to in a scene from SC. When we were first looking to move to this area from the northern part of the state, it was this exact spot that not only sold me on the neighborhood, but let me know that I was home, which, at the time, was what I needed more than anything else. It’s kind of a sad, nostalgic feeling.