Place

Now that I find myself in a new one, let's talk about the concept of place.

If you were an Environmental Studies major at a liberal-arts school, like me, you were doubtless steeped in many nature-writing, ethnobiology, natural history or literature-of-nature courses which emphasized, above all else, the vital importance of Place. Earning a sense of place. Living "in place." Even if you didn't study under the sainted Donald R. Snow, unless you've been living in a cave you're probably still quite familiar with this concept if you've ever patronized such retailers as Patagonia, New Seasons, or Whole Foods, had any interaction with a local environmental nonprofit, been to an outdoor film festival or lived in Portland, Oregon for more than five minutes. Being a "locavore," having "staycations," being a bioregionalist, practicing "place-based resource management" or "place-based living"--it's all part of the same ideal, which sounds lovely, but can in fact be frustratingly slippery and elusive when actually pursued with vigor by the average non-superhuman. The way I understand it, the idea of gaining a "sense of place" entails being present and paying attention to/getting to know/acting in accordance with what surrounds you--whether that's the inner workings of a city subway, the hatch times of insects, geologic landforms, native delicacies, sports, river flow regimes, etc.

The theme of place in nature writing is a big one, the list of authors and books concentrating on place a long one. In the past seven or eight years, I have unfortunately absorbed these writings in the canon of great and not-so-great nature writers until I now ooze the hunger for "sense-of-place" from every pore, having elevated the concept to a personal deity. I can't even count the number of essays I've read in High Country News or Orion in which the author expounds on the virtues of wandering through his or her local neighborhood, falling slowly in love with it. Over time, via his or her investment of attention and care to the chosen creek, mountain, urban community garden, abandoned field or whatever, the author is rewarded with profound insights, inner peace, and occasionally some rare wildlife sightings. Most writers spend a lot of time learning about a place and its inhabitants, cataloguing its flora, fauna, geology, human denizens, weather patterns, and general aura in detail, and then patting themselves on the back for becoming so integrated, for attaining that Olympic gold medal of any self-respecting naturalist or environmentalist worth her salt: the Sense Of Place (SOP for short). If it’s not Annie Dillard gushing over Tinker Creek, it’s James Galvin contemplating his favorite meadow.

What the self-respecting naturalist and environmentalist is supposed to do when she finds herself in a new place is to take it all in, to begin learning as much as she can about it, and finally, to develop a profound love for the spot (this last is non-optional). This is the classic story of how acquiring that elusive SOP is supposed to go: you arrive somewhere new, say, Alaska. It is strikingly beautiful, but heck, that’s just the surface you’re looking at. You gotta go deeper. You gotta get into the layers. So you stick around, you watch the seasons change, you observe tragedies and joys alike on the landscape. Maybe you put down some tentative roots. You learn the names of all the flowers that bloom in the spring, in sequence. You memorize the names of tributaries up and down the main watercourse. You pay attention to politics, meet your neighbors, and make connections. Finally, you begin to realize that this place is oh so much more than just Scenic. It's full of Meaning. Then you may congratulate yourself, because you have developed SOP. Let the profound insights begin.

Getting to know a place is slow, but I wish it could be faster. Whenever I find myself in a new place, I panic. I'm usually afraid that I will enter and leave without actually making an emotional connection to the landscape or community, and where would that leave me? It would leave me stranded and alone on the surface of somewhere. To truly qualify as the highest-caliber specimen of self-described bioregionalist, I must unlock the secrets of this place as quickly as possible, I murmur feverishly. I buy field guides and maps, attempt to memorize them, and ask as many questions as possible to the poor saps responsible for showing me around until they tire of me and leave me to fend for myself. While I do enjoy the process of becoming familiar with geography and seasons and flora and fauna and tides and weather and stars and customs and language and food and politics and people, it takes a long, long time. I’ve got a despicably modern mindset (the product of access to wireless internet) where intimacy with place is concerned. I want to know everything about this place, I want to know all of its nooks and crannies, I want to feel at home and as if I belong here and I want it NOW. But this is not only impossible. It is completely backwards.

I think it is only by dint of the laborious, gradual work of Paying Attention that we accumulate the many hard-earned small discoveries that eventually add up into a feeling of being at home. Earning your sense of place, to use the ultimate cliched phrase, cannot be anything but slow, and this is good. It keeps out the riff-raff, those who don’t, or won’t, put in the effort. There is no app for this you can purchase from iTunes for your smartphone. Sometimes, though, I wish there was. I am not riff-raff; I am more than willing to Pay Attention and I will happily memorize the names of dozens of plants, birds, and creeks; I will learn when they flock, flower, nest, migrate, and flood. I will do all of this, but I would also like a jump-start on my sense of place, a quick injection of belonging, please. So that, when I strike out for a new horizon, I don’t have this rip-roaring hunger for Home that I carry around with me somewhere just behind my heart.
That’s where a simple $1.99 app from iTunes—let’s call it the Sense of Place app—would come in so handy. Just a click, and a basic data download of local lore, plus an innate feeling of knowing your way around, would instantly appear in your brain. Under this scenario, though, you could know anyplace, everyplace. Places would no longer be special to you. We have to choose our places, have to work for them, and we can only hold a finite amount of information in our brains.

Ironically, though it might give you an enhanced intellectual perspective on what you are seeing and experiencing and help you get your bearings, no amount of frantic memorization can forge an emotional connection to place. That is a mysterious process you can't force, a process, I would venture, almost exactly the same as forging an emotional connection with a person. This might sound strange to some of you, but I firmly believe that the core foundations of love are the same when applied to both people and places. Author and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore puts it best in "The Pine Island Paradox" when she tries to distinguish between love for a person and love for a place:

"I stretched my back and started two lists. What does it mean to love a person? What does it mean to love a place? Before long, I discovered I had made two copies of the same list. To love--a person and a place-- means at least this:

One. To want to be near it, physically.
Number two. To want to know everything about it--its story, its moods, what it looks like by moonlight.
Number three. To rejoice in the fact of it.
Number four. To fear its loss, and grieve for its injuries.
Five. To protect it--fiercely, mindlessly, futilely, and maybe tragically, but to be helpless to do otherwise.
Six. To be transformed in its presence--lifted, lighter on your feet, transparent, open to everything beautiful and new.
Number seven. To want to be joined with it, taken in by it, lost in it.
Number eight. To want the best for it.
Numbr nine. Desperately.

Love is....not a choice, or a dream, or a romantic novel. It's a fact: an empirical fact about our biological existence. We are born into relationships with people and with places. We are born with the ability to create new relationships and tend to them. And we are born with a powerful longing for these relations. That complex connectedness nourishes and shapes us and gives us joy and purpose.

I knew there was something important missing from my list, but I was struggling to put it into words. Loving isn't just a state of being, it's a way of acting in the world. Love isn't a sort of bliss, it's a kind of work, sometimes hard, spirit-testing work. To love a person is to accept the responsibility to act lovingly toward him, to make his needs my own needs. To love a place is to care for it, to keep it healthy, to attend to its needs as if they were my own, because they are my own. Responsibility grows from love. It is the natural shape of caring.

Number ten, I wrote in my notebook. To love a person or a place is to accept moral responsibility for its well-being."

All of the above applies to what I feel here, now, in Aleknagik. I desperately want to get my bearings, figure out the lay of the land, be able to read the lake and the streams for roiling schools of sockeye, identify merlins and nesting terns, recognize the rustle of a bear in the alders, distinguish a three-spine stickleback from a nine-spine stickleback, learn to love the passing squalls, make connections with my fellow researchers, be able to drive and repair the boats, and most of all feel as if I belong. I want to love Aleknagik in all of the ways KDM describes above, including accepting moral responsibility for its well-being, but then I remember that we've only just shaken hands, and love might not be the logical next step. Based on past field research experiences where place-love actually happened, I have an unhelpful and unrealistic expectation of becoming immediately smitten with any body of water next to which I might pitch my tent. With this attitude, it's helpful to remind myself that, just like with any person, every place is different, and I may not end up feeling the same way about each one. I need to give it time, patience, and extremely lowered expectations. I know that this impatience won't help me get anywhere. I know that I am only here for two months, and that what you can learn and feel in two months may be encyclopedic, but it may also be somewhat limited. I know that there is no formula I can follow or tasks I can perform to gain SOP, and if SOP doesn't present itself to me, that doesn't mean failure.

So, as I gaze out on the Extremely Scenic View from my perch here on the back deck of the kitchen, an Extremely Scenic View which doesn't mean much to me yet, I look forward to the slow absorption of knowledge that will accompany my presence in this place, and, perhaps, if I'm lucky, even the beginnings of a feeling of belonging.