I've always been interested in the way we become close to a place, and slowly grow a sense of it. Like a new acquaintance, peering at them and smiling and talking about some odd thing, the getting-to-know-you-dance.
I remember the abject
need- for forest, for quiet, for beauty, when I was young.
As I grew up, always
there was a need for an escape hatch of some sort. Away at school on a
particularly difficult day, I remember leaving a meal and racing down the road and
across the front lawn to the stream beneath the trees, only to have my best and
dearest friend go racing past, and sit on the rocks, waiting for me there, in
that secluded place of succor. That moment stays within me, as part of my bones
and sinews, always. Both of us going to a beautiful comforting place.
As I grew older, I began
to realize that when developing a relationship with a place, it's important to
come to it, not out of need, but out of strength and a clear sense of your
self. Or at least openness for whatever the place held.
That, like a friendship
or a lover, using that knowing to fill some emptiness I had not learned to
nourish myself was not the path to clarity and truly seeing a place for what it
is.
And it would not unveil
its wonder and beauty and full self, if I approached from neediness, and a
whiny desire to forget hard things or have something/someone pretend to be able
to fix it for me.
We begin to learn that
getting to know a place is so much like an important person we sense will soon
mean a great deal to us. To take it slowly, and approach with our integrity and
wholeness.
The unfolding is what
amazes us, though, and the indeterminate nature of who or what was doing the
unfolding- our consciousness, our capacity to perceive, or the place in
question.
When we are fond of a
place, be it a corner of the city, especially in early morning, with the light
just so and the place stark and empty, or a flooded place down by a river, both
have a remarkable way of being that will slowly infiltrate us, and change us -
until we begin to notice and see all things we were blind to before.
Much like the 'Copenhagen
Interpretation' , where the observed changes when interacting with the
observer, land does the same thing. A place with microbes and growing things
does the same. And remember, who is to say which is the observer, our human
selves, or the land?
When we slowly grow a
relationship with a place, NOT our emotional associations with the place based
on our experiences, but the place itself, devoid of our baggage, it deepens
with each season. Each storm, or drought or startling spring. With each new day
or phenomena, we become familiar with more depth of the place.
The interaction deepens
and brings forth so much more.
When I go photograph the
same places on different days or sunrises or sunsets or storms or seasons, each
time it's like I run into you somewhere, and we talk a bit. I get a sense of
how you are doing, unconsciously my self evaluates your scent that conveys
health and functioning, and our knowing each other becomes more complex. And if
we like each other, it becomes more and more pleasurable and interesting.
I love this about places.
I love returning, and listening and watching and smelling and hiking or sitting
and having that interaction.
It's not about pretending
the place has ears and eyes, no need to go veering into Anthropomorphism. Who
needs that? When what is before us is remarkable beyond reckoning, and holds
such beauty beyond imagining.
Which is why the concept
of a sense of place is a pleasing one.
It comes closest to articulating that
priceless experience, of being with a place or some land or a field or stand of
trees or beach or river or corner of streets.
Where what is happening in that
place becomes something that is happening within ourselves, too.
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