I grew up in tornado alley, in a state that wasn’t yet part of the union during the Civil War, but I transplanted myself to the upper Midwest for graduate school in the late summer of 1988. Moving from Omaha to Milwaukee might not seem like much of a change. But Lake Michigan marks the eastern edge of the time zone, so the sun sets almost an hour earlier here - and by December, that means four-thirty p.m. And here in Wisconsin, there isn’t much spring. Winter weather devolves into rain that can last until June, and if you’re near the lake, you might still need long sleeves after dark, even in August.

Milwaukee is also a much older and more industrial city, with a deep manufacturing vein running right down its center, straight through the Menomonee Valley. When I first arrived, a strong smell of hops from the brewery just west of campus used to waft over the freeway to mingle with notes of warm cocoa from the Ambrosia chocolate factory downtown. Now, Miller Brewing is owned by Molson Coors, and a revitalized Menomonee Valley boasts the dancing blue flame of the Potawatomi Casino.

But as ownership changes, some infrastructure remains. After I got my first job, I lived in a studio apartment on Milwaukee’s lower East Side, where my windows looked out onto the wall of the building next door. But my future husband and I made the most of that neighborhood. There were three residential hotels within a five-minute walk, each name recalling the bygone era in which they were built: The Astor, the Knickerbocker, the Plaza. The Astor is a long-term residence for the elderly rich, though it’s a less swanky address than the Cudahy Towers, which is nearer the Summerfest grounds. The Hotel Knickerbocker has an elegant restaurant with patio seating two blocks from the lake. But our favorite place was always Sheila’s Café in the Plaza Hotel, where we would have grilled cheese sandwiches at a vintage ’50s lunch counter. I developed a keen nostalgia for that part of town, even while we still lived there.

Milwaukee is freighted with personal touchstones. For me, that stretch of Kilbourn Avenue where I once left my car buried in snow for a day still holds the shape of my younger self walking to work. Later, when we got married and moved to Shorewood, I drove the back way downtown: I would stop at the light near the cream city brick of St. Hedwig’s on the corner of Brady and Humboldt, before swooping down North Water Street past the Pfister and Vogel tannery, which has since been demolished. But I no longer travel that way, so in my mind, it’s still there. We create our own internal map of a place, moving houses and street names around—or even imposing an earlier cityscape on top of the mixed-use development zone that has taken its place.

And transplantation can sometimes look more like transposition, especially when something is being preserved or reclaimed. I had a “Surrender, Dorothy” moment recently while a friend and I were out walking her dog in the inner-ring suburb where we raised our children together. Just a few years ago, an old house known as the Log Cabin stood in a parking lot next to the cemetery on Wauwatosa Avenue. There was nothing especially prepossessing about it; I had always assumed it was some sort of kit house built midcentury to evoke Daniel Boone. Apparently, it dated back further than that-just not to the days of log cabins. Still, a great deal of fuss arose when the property was sold to make room for apartments, and the owner agreed to donate the Log Cabin to an architectural firm for its office space. And now, here it stands in a dense neighborhood a dozen blocks east on the corner of 64th Street and North Avenue, having been transported as if by tornado during the night onto a secure foundation of carefully mortared and locally quarried Lannon stone. If there had ever been a wicked witch trapped underneath, she must have shed her ruby slippers and withdrawn her withered old feet in their stockings as fast as she could.

They say when you dream about houses, you are trying to exert control over your life. Every once in a while, I dream I’ve just moved into some sprawling old home full of other people’s belongings. What would I make out of such a place? Or more importantly, what would it make out of me? But perhaps this is the wrong question. After all, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. Perhaps writing, like moving, is more of an act of faith—or an act of surrender.

So, let’s choose a tree to go with our transplanted Log Cabin. In our inner-ring suburb, along the Menomonee River, an evergreen tree near the bridge looks just like the witch turning into a dragon in Sleeping Beauty: she rears back on her tail, forepaws clawing the air. Or maybe we should choose something more ladylike-this tree, for example, with a middle part in its hair: half its branches lean over the river, the other half over the path, and a covert of leaves dangles over my head when I walk underneath, like a woman’s fan held upside down. Or maybe, since our Log Cabin is in such a small urban space, we might content ourselves with a tree from a neighbor’s front lawn with its roots like a wheel all exposed on the surface-like an amusement park ride that lifts off and sends the swings flying. Yes, this is the one. And perhaps our transplanted tree will thrive where it lands, if we only have faith. After all, I’ve been rooted here in Milwaukee for thirty-five years.