Long Way Round
It's been a while. But fear not; I have been working. Since last we met, I have completed a 57-page monstrosity of a chapter, and I am working on another, leaner, meaner chapter as we speak. Here's a little something to blow the dust of this thing:
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It is often difficult to express a sense of place, to put words to the feelings of attachment and “at homeness” we may feel in relation to certain landscapes or locations. As daily life bustles on, people are seldom called upon to consider, much less articulate, the deeper meanings of our surroundings, the ways in which our home territories—and our own histories within those territories—shape our routines and perceptions. Whether urban, rural, or even wilderness, the landscapes we live within may be so familiar to us, that we fail to even “see” them, to recognize how their shapes and sights and sounds influence our ways of seeing—of defining and evaluating—ourselves and the wider world. Quite simply, there are few things in life that are easier to take for granted than the ground we tread everyday, the scenery that constantly surrounds us. Yet, as we may learn if we are in some way disconnected from our home places, there are also few things in life more important to our sense of self and well-being than a sense of place and placed identity. When we are, as Keith Basso has described it,
deprived of these attachments [to places] and find ourselves adrift, literally dislocated, in unfamiliar surroundings we do not comprehend and care for even less…sense of place may assert itself in pressing and powerful ways, and its often subtle components—as subtle, perhaps, as absent smells in the air or not enough visible sky—come surging into awareness. It is then we come to see that attachments to places may be nothing less than profound, and that when these attachments are threatened we may feel threatened as well. Places, we realize, are as much a part of us as we are part of them, and senses of place—yours, mine, and everyone else’s—partake complexly of both. (xiii-xiv)
Confronting the threat of change or of displacement, individuals thus become aware not just of their affinity for the comforts of home or the familiarity of the “local,” but of the central importance a sense of place—an attachment to a particular landscape, whether built or natural, and an awareness of one’s own relationship to the ever-accruing stories of that place—can hold for their definitions of self and their ways of seeing and simply being in the world.
Articulating a sense of place and evoking the importance of an attachment to place built upon a lived and storied relationship to particular landscapes is one of the pervasive themes of Western American literature. If it is difficult for people to express the complex relationship between identity, perception, and place, then it is doubly so when one’s place—one’s home landscape and regional identity—is often caricatured, underrated, or even overlooked by the machinery of mainstream culture. When compared with the heavily populated urban centers of American culture, or with the nostalgic values celebrated in visions of Main Street Middle America, or even with the verdant foliage of America’s wooded wildernesses, the expanses of the open, arid West are often perceived, at best, as sparse, marginal, and virtually uninhabited. Subsequently, those who would speak to the value of this landscape—to the stories and lives and meaning of a real, everyday West—do so in the face of a popular perception of the landscape as worth-less. Though such perceptions may make it more difficult to convey the message of a meaningful and placed sense of Westernness, they do lend a perspective and urgency to those speaking of and from the West, for faced with the threat of “no place,” their senses of place—their attachments to Western lands and landscapes—are thrown into relief, and, as Basso would describe it, “come surging into awareness.”
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It is often difficult to express a sense of place, to put words to the feelings of attachment and “at homeness” we may feel in relation to certain landscapes or locations. As daily life bustles on, people are seldom called upon to consider, much less articulate, the deeper meanings of our surroundings, the ways in which our home territories—and our own histories within those territories—shape our routines and perceptions. Whether urban, rural, or even wilderness, the landscapes we live within may be so familiar to us, that we fail to even “see” them, to recognize how their shapes and sights and sounds influence our ways of seeing—of defining and evaluating—ourselves and the wider world. Quite simply, there are few things in life that are easier to take for granted than the ground we tread everyday, the scenery that constantly surrounds us. Yet, as we may learn if we are in some way disconnected from our home places, there are also few things in life more important to our sense of self and well-being than a sense of place and placed identity. When we are, as Keith Basso has described it,
deprived of these attachments [to places] and find ourselves adrift, literally dislocated, in unfamiliar surroundings we do not comprehend and care for even less…sense of place may assert itself in pressing and powerful ways, and its often subtle components—as subtle, perhaps, as absent smells in the air or not enough visible sky—come surging into awareness. It is then we come to see that attachments to places may be nothing less than profound, and that when these attachments are threatened we may feel threatened as well. Places, we realize, are as much a part of us as we are part of them, and senses of place—yours, mine, and everyone else’s—partake complexly of both. (xiii-xiv)
Confronting the threat of change or of displacement, individuals thus become aware not just of their affinity for the comforts of home or the familiarity of the “local,” but of the central importance a sense of place—an attachment to a particular landscape, whether built or natural, and an awareness of one’s own relationship to the ever-accruing stories of that place—can hold for their definitions of self and their ways of seeing and simply being in the world.
Articulating a sense of place and evoking the importance of an attachment to place built upon a lived and storied relationship to particular landscapes is one of the pervasive themes of Western American literature. If it is difficult for people to express the complex relationship between identity, perception, and place, then it is doubly so when one’s place—one’s home landscape and regional identity—is often caricatured, underrated, or even overlooked by the machinery of mainstream culture. When compared with the heavily populated urban centers of American culture, or with the nostalgic values celebrated in visions of Main Street Middle America, or even with the verdant foliage of America’s wooded wildernesses, the expanses of the open, arid West are often perceived, at best, as sparse, marginal, and virtually uninhabited. Subsequently, those who would speak to the value of this landscape—to the stories and lives and meaning of a real, everyday West—do so in the face of a popular perception of the landscape as worth-less. Though such perceptions may make it more difficult to convey the message of a meaningful and placed sense of Westernness, they do lend a perspective and urgency to those speaking of and from the West, for faced with the threat of “no place,” their senses of place—their attachments to Western lands and landscapes—are thrown into relief, and, as Basso would describe it, “come surging into awareness.”
posted by TRM at 9:37 AM
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