Origins

I've spent the better part of the last week (or perhaps, to say "the better part of my entire life" might be more accurate) considering these, my very own words, and how I might respond to them:

Meditate on the landscape and culture that gave birth to you and nurtured you. What connections can you draw between the elements of that landscape and the elements of the culture? Speculate on the ways in which the environment of this place might have shaped the character of the people who live there (or you!).

It seems that the more I meditate on the place of my birth, the place where I lived for the first two decades of my life - northeastern Ohio - the more I come up empty-handed. Or rather, empty-hearted. I know that these formative places and spaces are supposed to have some importance, some resonance. Even if our relationships to them have been difficult or conflicted, they should, my logical mind tells me, have some meaning for us. And yet, when I consider Ohio, something I never, ever did when I lived there, it feels like a vast and empty space, a blankness, both in my mind and in my heart. It is place that has never felt like mine, a part of me in the least. I could have been raised anywhere or nowhere at all. No matter how deeply I try to make myself think of it, how much I try to conjure memories or attachments, it remains a place that almost never really existed at all. Almost as if my life itself didn't exist until I left.

And when I do look back, try to understand how little it impacted me, I realize now that although it was mostly unconscious, I did spend all my time there wanting and waiting to leave. Feeling as if I had been somehow born in the wrong place. That Ohio was just where I had the misfortune of being born and raised.

My place-related memories are so few: I remember a particularly cold winter in 1985, walking to the bus after school in the -10 degrees, and wondering what I was doing there, whether I had a choice to be there. I remember being forced on a hike in a local park so I could get my Girl Scout hiking badge. At the time, it felt like some kind of torturous, never-ending death march; I remember just wishing the entire time that it was over. Years later, on a visit back to that park, I realized the trail we took that day was only something like a mile long (in my kid mind, it was easily 10+ miles...). I found an old photo from that day recently and was stunned to realize it had been a breathtaking autumn day, in the height of the leaves changing, simply gorgeous. And yet, I saw none of that. What few memories I have are these two extremes, either utter lack of attention or a desire for escape. It's no wonder then that I ran away at the first chance I got and never looked back. No wonder that I spent most of my adult life physically and spiritually *homeless*, trying on new places wherever the wind took me. I guess all that time I must have been looking for what I had never had, had been looking for a place to call my own. My home.

And still, despite my own lack of history and connection, I'm still not sure whether it's possible to grow up without some sense of place, even if that sense is absence or disconnection. Is it the fault of my parents, that I almost never considered where I was from and what, if anything, it meant? Like the Hungarian language, history, and culture my immigrant father never taught me, Ohio is something I never taught myself, never allowed myself to learn. If anything, what I have learned now only in retrospect is that I do not wish for my daughters to feel the same sort of lack, placelessness. It has become critical that I teach them how to truly see their world, their places, this one, and all the ones to come. That they feel connected in some way to the land. I had no such teacher myself, so I fumble my way through.

Tobacco

In reading others' blog entries this week, I am immediately intrigued too by MAR's commentary on smoking in his first place entry. Perhaps it's the reformed smoker in me that relates to these ideas. I remember thinking about this issue often while in Sequoia National Park: sitting on the side of a trail during a long hike and taking a smoke break, being far into the backcountry away from all other humans and smoking around camp at night, climbing a mountain with a pack of cigarettes easily-accessible in my pack. Tobacco was a huge part of my life there, then, as it was for everyone I knew. And I remember thinking so many times how its very existence seemed in conflict with my that place and that very life. How hypocritcal I felt.

It makes me think about that question of "natural" vs "unnatural" - is smoking a natural behavior? Is there some contradiction in the idea of being in a natural place while doing it? Tobacco also grows, much like the dormant plants in the community garden that MAR describes, so that should mean it's inherently a natural process. But at the same time, there feels, intuitively, like something unnatural in it.

And while I'm four years reformed - now it's so hard to even imagine that I was ever a smoker in the first place - this entry made me want to know more about the whole aspect of tobacco growing, the history and culture and myth. These are facts I should know, living now in a state where the primary revenue source is tobacco. A state where it's really a whole way of life. I've been given much to meditate on further!

Shades of Gray

It's very hard to craft a *place* entry when my place for the last week or so has mostly been my house, more particularly, my living room, where I can still be found coughing uncontrollably and existing on a diet of soup and popsicles. I wonder why it is that whatever illness Z brings home from school always seems to hit me hardest (well me and now her baby sister). So I have no choice but to write a place-by-proxy entry...

One of my only excursions into the outdoors this week, an early morning walk with Pepper, rushed because it was cold, because we were running late and because there were, as always, things to do and places to be. On the return home, in a yard, there was the briefest flash of white and black very nearby. Instinctively, my mind immediately went back to the the last time. As such is the nature of The Peppy, she barked and lunged. And I couldn't help but immediately panic. And how sorry I felt for that poor hapless black and white kitty on the receiving end of such an unwelcome morning greeting. I guess some things will never change, some instincts are just that, instincts, overwhelming and hard-wired.

But the encounter got me thinking more about these creatures - not the kitties, though the whole indoor vs. outdoor cat issue is definitely post-worthy - who are such a ubiquitous part of this place. Until coming here, I'm not sure I ever saw a skunk in real life, had only experienced their presence left behind. I think about my English friend, smelling one for the first time in California, since there are no skunks where he comes from (a place where there are also no fireflies, sadly). And I realize that although I have always known of them, like my friend, I really don't know them at all. But I am learning. Just last week I watched the PBS episode of "Nature" "Is That Skunk?". Fascinating stuff. I am most compelled by the idea that skunks are marginal animals - literally and figuratively - that live on, in, around the borders between natural and unnatural spaces; they make their homes in the artificial borders that we humans have created. I think of my UK student Johnny, and his interest in these borderland areas. And wonder whether there is an English animal counterpart, some animal there that makes its home primarily in these blurry places.

That show, and my recent skunk encounters, serve as good introductions to what will probably be more research, more of my own learning about this place where I live (and where I shall probably live for quite a while longer).

Joining the Flock

Since I've asked all my students in the nature & environmental writing course this semester to keep a nature blog, I feel like I also should do my best to complete my own assignments as well. Doing so would be a useful and much needed exercise for me too. What I've asked them to write, during most weeks:

1. One posting from a chosen “place” where students will go weekly;
2. A second posting in response to a directed question/prompt related to the week’s
course topic;
3. A third posting that reflects on or responds to:
a. Either a blog post by one of the fellow students OR
b. A blog post found on an outside nature blog through the Nature Blog
Network (http://natureblognetwork.com/).

To be honestly practical, I have to admit that I will likely not have the luxury of setting aside time each week for writing about a chosen place - though my several-times-weekly runs in the park could probably fit. I have so little time, still, and parenting and teaching takes up most of it, still. But I can write to the other two requirements. In fact, I actually look forward to trying.

Under the Vulture Tree

(I know I'm getting a little obsessive about these birds these days...)

A couple of weeks ago, a Wednesday morning, skies grey, temperatures in the mid-40s. I am taking my morning run in Wildwood Park a little later than usual. On all my runs, I've grown accustomed to seeing them soaring overhead in groups so large the sky is sometimes a swirling sea of black wings. They've become a comforting sight, somehow. I approach the bird-watching platform and realize that there are hundreds of black vultures all perched together in a cluster of oak trees. I pause the music and walk down to the platform, and suddenly, I am standing beneath them all. To my surprise, none of them move, none seem to acknowledge my presence. I've seen turkey vultures up close like this, but never the blacks. They are literally right above my head and I spend a good ten minutes or so watching them. And then, without warning, a couple spread their wings and leave - I wonder what reasons motivate them - and all the rest follow.

By now it's clear that there's more thinking, and probably writing, real writing, to be done with the vultures. Some larger metaphor in this that I need to meditate on more closely. In all my researching, some of the most interesting details I've learned: to the ancient Egyptians, vultures were deities, emblems of motherhood, giving life and then later taking it back, and to Mayans they also represented fertility. I meditate further. And wait until the next time.

Mysteries of the Bear

I watched a Nat Geo show recently, "Mystery Bear of the Arctic". The mysterious bear in question turned out to be, discovered through extensive DNA testing, to be a polar/brown bear hybrid, with a polar mother and a brown father, the only one of its kind yet found (they speculate that because both species often birth multiple cubs, there could be others still out there). I'm not entirely convinced by the "reasons" given for such a union - that grizzly would have had to travel an unheard of distance, into a range where they are not known to go. But given that both species either avoid interaction entirely if they do meet, or that such interactions usually involve a violent conflict, this is a curious and fascinating idea to consider. Then again, I'm a little over-informed and over-interested in bears.

Still, I can't help but dwell on the reasons the bear was discovered in the first place. Ridiculously rich American man spends $25K to participate in escorted polar bear hunt by Native Inuit guide. The whole situation feels morally questionable and exploitative. That photo says it all.

Roar

A few nights ago, late, I sat in the office working and again paused from my work to listen to the wind, roaring and howling and shaking, as I often do. Before coming here, the presence of wind was something I rarely considered, something I simply took for granted. But now. Here it's necessarily become something I have no choice but to think about often, an omnipresent companion that remains always close. I have never before seen, let alone lived in, such a windy place. At least several times, every single week, we have 40-50+ mph winds that come in usually suddenly and without warning. I've researched and researched, but have found no one that mentions the phenomena particular to this region. Geographically, the presence of such frequent and powerful winds makes sense: the New River Valley lies tucked quietly in between the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains. This is a very economically depressed area, with little in the way of commerce. I remain puzzled, then, why no one here has yet considered harnessing these winds for power.

In thinking about the wind, I am reminded of this poem by Ted Hughes:

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.