Any guesses?

Sometimes I wonder how much of a place I’d need to see before I could accurately guess where I was.

In the United States, I occasionally feel like cities are slowly morphing into other cities, their unique traits obscured by the hallmarks of consumerism and affluence.

The natural world can say more than the places where large groups of people have chosen to settle down; box stores all look the same but canyons and mountains shout their differences.

So this weekend, I’m somewhere I used to know well; I still recognize it, in fits and starts, but at the same time, it’s new to me.

There are landmarks, of course, that carry history with them and have stood the test of time.

But without those, is it possible to know where I am?

This coffee shop, Bob Dylan’s voice raining down from an overhead speaker, could be anywhere.

Yet it isn’t. It’s here, and so am I for a little while longer, before I leave and it changes yet again, before I head home, where things might just be almost exactly as I left them.