I Live Here?

Having been gone for nearly a month, I can see what a strange place home is. The hills are brown, the brush bone dry, the temperatures weirdly hot.

Last night, the windows were open but the night was utterly still and stifling, and I lay awake hearing coyotes sounding very near, and the soft intermittent hooting of an owl.

Then, suddenly, ferocious wind, beginning just before sunrise, gusting in like a drunken intruder, banging doors and the pictures on the walls.

Somehow none of it seems familiar yet.