Growing up on a farm, I did not identify with any particular skyline. My skyline was … well, a sky. The bottom border of that sky was subtle. The soft fringe of a cornfield. The rolling silhouette of an orchard. The simple, flat lines of Midwestern plains.

And after dark, the border faded altogether. When the sun sets, farm and sky become one.

As I neared the end of my college education, I needed to decide: stay in my rural home, or find work in a city? Drawing a semi-wide circle around my hometown, I had skyline options. The St. Louis arch, or a bridge joining the Quad Cities, over the mighty Mississippi.

Had proximity not been a priority, I could have even considered the remarkable skylines of New York, Los Angeles, or (gasp) Paris.

But it was Chicago’s skyline that called to me. The highs and lows. The fine spires over the Sears and Hancock towers. The skirt of greenery below—a brief but clear transition between the city’s manufactured high-rises and the untamed waves of Lake Michigan.

I loved the landscape twenty-some years ago, when I claimed it as my own, and I love it still today.

Chicago has become my home.