I woke up this morning to an eerie fog hanging over everything outside. When I stepped onto the porch and looked down our street, the fog stretched in both directions, swallowing the neighborhood whole. My first thought?

Goodness... this feels like Derry today.

I took these photos from the middle of the street, soaking in the scene. Then I turned back toward the house and spotted something that made me laugh: a sewer drainage ditch.

For just a second, I half expected to see a red balloon drifting above it... or Pennywise peering up from below.

All that thinking about Derry got me wondering about some of the places that loom so large in IT. What do the Barrens really look like? What about the Kenduskeag Stream that winds through the novel?

In my imagination, they look a little bit like this creek near my home, one of our favorite spots to fish.

Or maybe they resemble the river where I spent so much time as a kid in West Virginia, swimming, fishing, and exploring along the banks of the New River.

One of the things I love most about IT is how familiar Derry feels. Even though it's fictional, King's descriptions make it easy to connect the town to places we've all known: the creek down the road, the river from childhood, or a foggy neighborhood street that suddenly feels just a little unsettling.

And on mornings like this, it doesn't take much imagination to believe that Derry might be waiting just around the corner.