As soon as we unpacked our bags in Bloomington, I set out to explore the neighborhood, to learn its ways and wildflowers, to hike the trails, drive the back roads, listen and watch. . . . In all these explorations, I was not following a literary strategy, I was following my nose — or to invoke a more elegant organ, my heart. Weary of travel, I was glad to give up being a visitor and ready to become an inhabitant. I wished to make my new home ground the ground of my imagination.
— Scott Russell Sanders, Writing from the Center