Sense of place is something that I’ve grappled with for a while now. I don’t feel a strong connection to a particular place, community, or institution and I don’t think that I’m alone in feeling that way. Over the last 5 weeks or so between different perspectives, readings and discussions I’ve considered why many Americans (myself included) feel this way. There are a lot of reasons that I’ve been challenging myself to think this way while I have the time to do so. A major factor has been the contrast in my life between time spent in the backcountry vs time spent in the front country.
In the backcountry time moved differently. While I was in Horseshoe Canyon and Dirty Devil Canyon I felt grounded in those places. At any given time I was aware of which direction was north, where I was on a map and where which stars were going to rise, now the stars tell me how I’m oriented.
In the van we fly past streams that I’ll never know the names of, blurs of trees I don’t recognize and sometimes I’m even unaware of when we cross state lines. As Americans we move a lot on a day to day basis. We cover great distances in our cars or public transport, we move around our landscape at unnatural speeds and natural landmarks escape us. As Barry Lopez says in his piece, The Rediscovery of North America, “What we need is to discover the continent again.” We are out of touch with our sense of place; the landscapes that we live in offer so much knowledge and wealth that we don’t even see. Some of the Navajo stories we were told of the 4 mountains and the four rivers that mark the home place of the Navajo framed a deep sense of place for that culture. I think that we have a lot to learn from that as a society, when land is more than a commodity, places can become sacred and we can begin to build our relationship to the land. Much like our day to day lives American colonialism moved fast, settling the land and commodifying places, consumption outpacing connection.
I think that connection to land is a crucial piece of finding that sense of place that we have been systematically severed from. I wouldn’t say that it’s necessary to completely immerse into a landscape to know that place and feel a connection to it, but it helps. Learning the names of some of the plants and animals, observing them, knowing what makes your home unique while being in touch with the ways that that place fluctuates through the seasons and years will make you feel more connected to a landscape. So maybe next time you’re on your way to work, or school or the store, notice the natural landmarks along the way that make the land unique. When you find that you have time identify some of the trees and critters that run around in your neighborhood, park or campus – getting to know your neighbors may make you feel just a little more at home.
