I have lived in Northborough, Massachusetts for my entire life. It is located in Worcester County and has a population of about 14,155. My graduating class was about 366 students at a regional high school with one other town. My town’s biggest highlights are Tougas Family Farm, Ski Ward Ski Area, and a shopping center called Northborough Crossing which holds a Wegmans, Old Navy, TJMaxx, Ulta, and other stores like that. I remember when Northborough Crossing was first being built I was in middle school and was so excited to have something to do in my town. However, the older I got and the more I learned I realized how truly awful this was because they tore down some forests and now Saturday mornings are busy with people from surrounding areas grocery shopping. After being gone for three months I have found that nothing has changed in the entirety of this town and that I have missed my hometown while exploring Vermont in college. The fact that home will never change is reassuring because I know I will always have a place to go back to where I became myself. In elementary school, I learned the brief history of my town. The areas surrounding Northborough were first settled by Nipmuc Indians and then in 1656 Europeans had a petition for resettlement from the people of the Sudbury Plantation to the General Court of the Bay Colony. And so than in 1766 Northborough was established as a district and became a town in 1775. Northborough is located in New England where there are deciduous forests with lots of organisms like white-tailed deer, squirrels, oak trees, eastern white pine, sassafras, and mosquitoes. My biggest sense of place has been influenced by life right in my backyard. I am fortunate enough to have been exposed to natural areas with the woods in my backyard. This area exposed me to the natural world around me from a young age when my cousins and I would play fairies in the trees, or when I discovered the small pond in middle school, or when sitting in a clearing made me realize I wanted to study environmental science. My sense of place is defined by water and the presence of lakes, oceans, and ponds. From the time I was little that pond was my first introduction to any type of water and is there for the first spot where I felt home. Now whenever I go on vacation to a beach, or a lake, or see a river on a hiking path, I feel a connection to the land around me that always calms me down.