It's the places that make you who you are.

When you're writing a story, if you don't have a setting, you're lost. When you remember something important, you start with the place and work backwards. People want to know where you're from, before they know what you've done.

That's about what I was thinking as I hurtled around the city on the Steed, charting a course across the city that would bring me to the places I knew, places I could call my own. Truth be, I didn't get out of the house much anymore, and most of my stomping grounds were bookstores and the Campus, places I inhabited nearly every waking hour, whose every contour I knew, but which I couldn't reasonably call my own.

Also they weren't geographical features, but that's less important, probably.

But there were places I had deep ties to, spots on the map where I could sit and feel at home. Places from my childhood, places whose bonds to me could not be weathered by time.

The first place is fairly unremarkable. It doesn't even really have a name, officially. But when I was growing up, my brothers and I called it Graham Cracker Hill.



The name, you see, arose from the fact that the sidewalk tiles on the hill- at the time unusually straight and well-laid- appeared to our young minds to be the exact shape, colour, and texture of graham crackers. Hence, Graham Cracker Hill. Every year I go back, it's a little smaller. At least, that's what I tell myself. Time was I'd have to get off and push the Steed up the hill if I wanted to get anywhere. Now I just drop to low gear and roll over without a problem. Like I said, it's not especially remarkable, but when I was a kid, Graham Cracker Hill was my one chance at Perspective.

My parents, bless 'em, would often take me to the hill, back before I could even walk. They'd roll me up the hill in a buggy (or, if I was very, very fortunate, my dad would carry me up on his shoulders). Upon reaching the top, we'd turn around, and in that moment, I could see everything. My entire city, my home, laid out in front of me. I could see to the harbour, across the bridge, and on clear days I would imagine I could see all the way to the Citadel. And as I sat, and watched, the same words rumbled through my head.

One day, everything the light touches will be yours.

Of course, I didn't take a picture. Standing up there now, tall as I am, I'd see it all- but by now, I've seen it all before. The view would be one of warm familiarity, rather than the boundless, gleaming possibility that it was when I was a child, looking out across a fantasy world unexplored. I couldn't handle that right now. If I went, and looked, I wouldn't have been able to write this properly. I won't show you what it looks like now- you can imagine for yourselves, and experience some of the magic yourself.

The next spot is my forest.



Well, okay, not my "forest", per se. It's more of a grove. It has a little more relevance to me today than the Hill- I have to bike past, or through it, every day, two ways. Spending that much time in and around it, I've come to be pretty attached to the place. It's part of a local "urban wilderness" park, which is shorthand for a convenient place for junkies, gang members, and sleazy teenagers to hide from the public eye. But the part I call my own is just close enough to the road to make it inconvenient for the activities they'd take part in, and on a sunny day like this, it looks like a little patch of Tolkein.



I like it here. I like it because, in a lot of ways, it's the last boundary between the city, and my neighbourhood. Once I'm through there, I'm almost done my commute. It's the line between there and here. Away, and home. It's always there to see me off when I leave, and it's there to welcome me back when I return. It's as much a part of my home as... well, my home.



Finally, we're down to the big one- the harbour.



Every man-jack (or, er, woman-jill?) who comes out of the Municipality can call the Harbour their own. It's a fixture of the city, and all along the waterfront there's good cheer to be found and laughter in the air. But everyone has a patch- a stretch, if you will- that they really identify with, and can really call their own. Mine is here.



This spot is right near where I spent many long hours as a child. My parents took me down to the waterfront a lot, as I recall. There were always lots of cool things for a kid to do here (my favourites were when they'd roll out a tank full of tide pool inhabitants you could poke and whatnot. Having worked at a marine institute and an oceanography department, the opportunity to hold a scallop holds little glimmer for me now, but when I was a lad, the opportunity to actually hold another living organism was quite something). But the coolest thing, and the part I have some of the best childhood memories of, is this.



Well, not this. This wasn't here when I was a kid. When I was here, there was a different playground, one with a decidedly more morbid bent. It was about the same size, but it resembled more the dessicated husk of a beached ship, its timbers torn away to expose the insides.

The material from which it was constructed was hard, and unforgiving, and there were no shortages of low ceilings to whack your head on. The ground beneath it was gravel, the big round kind that hurt to crawl on and got all in your shoes. And you had to crawl, since parts of the ship were so near to the ground that you could only get through on your hands and knees. There was a rudimentary bridge, with a non-functioning control panel that looked like it had just been ripped from an actual boat, the words across it meaningless to us. It wasn't like other playground control panels, all spinning wheels and soft-edged valves to turn- this was cold steel, with switches and dials and gaping holes where the guts of the machinery had been ripped out. And the entire thing was infested with harbour rats.

It was just about the best goddamn playground in the world. And from its glorious cabin, my brothers and I commanded a crew of shrieking children as we conquered worlds that only existed in our heads.

It's long gone, now. Someone up and realized that it was dangerous as all hell, steamrolled the thing in the name of protecting the children who loved it so, and put up this day-glo affront. The ground is no longer harsh, sharp gravel. The ceilings are no longer punishments for the unwary. I haven't looked inside, but I suspect the control panel- if any- is all spinning wheels and soft-edged valves. I'm sure it's a fine playground. But it's not mine.

But this spot, this ground, this pier- these are mine. And though They've taken my ship, and my crew has grown old as I have, I can stand on this ground and see for years. I can look into the harbour from this spot, this tiny outcropping, and remember the days when I looked out as a younger man, and saw serpents roiling in the foam, and beasts unheard of churning in the depths. I can still look out and remember as my brothers and I sounded the rallying cry, and the cannons that only the young could see fired their salvos at dread ships that skirted the edge of the horizon, driven by fearsome engines that spewed black smoke into the sky. I can stand on this tiny patch of land and remember the days I defended it, the days I stood for it, the days I stopped, looked out at the water and said "This is mine". And as I stood today, and stared at what remained, I remembered every day we took the ship out to sea and did battle to protect our land- and I knew some aboard what stands there today were doing the same.

A final note. There's one final thing that's not a geographical feature, but it's a fixture of the city and I've grown rather attached to it, enough that I feel safe in calling it mine, and enough that I don't feel quite right leaving it out, even if it doesn't strictly fit with the task. Y'see, coming up, I was a big fan of Theodore the Tugboat. I had all the episodes on tape, I knew all the characters, and in fact my family and I had taken to nicknaming each other after characters from the show (some of which persist to this day). And I, I had the greatest honour of all.

I, you see, was Theodore.