This feeling of intense imprinting to place is what made me return to the East Coast after six years of living in idyllic Santa Barbara, CA, with it's sunny and 70 degree days, ocean air, and stunning views. I joked, living there, that it was really hard to go on vacation when almost everywhere else the weather felt less comfortable. But somehow I knew I needed the intense seasons of NY, OH, and New England to mark time, to give myself the space to rest and the ecstasy of spring energy after so much cold and wet. Now I live outside Boston and it's similar to, but not exactly the same as Western NY where I grew up. I find myself constantly adjusting my expectations of snow (much less here) and heat (much more). I would love to read about this topic of deep connection to place too, and would welcome any suggestions that you find. Another commenter suggested Wendell Berry, so I will start there. He wrote a biography of the painter Harlan Hubbard that I will look back through with this theme in mind. Thank you for your beautiful writing, this piece touched me deeply.
Thank you so much for this beautiful reflection, Anna. I also love how the seasons of New England mark time and make the turning of the year feel sensory and embodied. Also, I love that Wendell Berry wrote a biography of a painter...I'll have to check that out!
Beautiful to read your words. Having lived in Maryland for 69 years, I am wedded to the beauty of four seasons, the landscape speaks to me. My roots are deep here, as I am deeply grateful for the earth.
I believe Wendell Berry writes about deep connection to sense of place.
I think whole countries can imprint themselves on us. I am English, I live in Mexico. As hard as it was to leave England I know it would be harder still to leave Mexico. But I never cease to miss the four seasons, the spring flowers (even though the trees here are spectacular in spring) and my friends have to send me photos of snow drops, bluebells, fox gloves, as the seasons change after the cold and dark of winter. It seems strange but feeling cold is something I miss, and that moment of total excitement when the first violets show through is something I yearn for.
But my home is here, there is nothing like the first rainfall to thrill me. I always go out in it and get wet. And I right now? I listen to the frogs sing at night and hope that the that first rainfall is on its way.
Is it possible for two countries so different to imprint themselves on me?
Rosalind, I can tell from how vivid and sensory and embodied your words are here, and how clearly your love for both of these places comes through, that it is absolutely possible to have two countries imprint themselves! How wonderful to have found that deep sense of home in those two places.
This whole conversation and all of these generous responses are calling to mind that Walt Whitman truth that applies to so much, "I contain multitudes" -- this seems to extend to the myriad places we contain (and that contain us as well).
Chelsea, your writing has brought back memories of a long-ago conversation with the writer and ecologist, Paul Shepard. This happened at a symposium in Sitka, Alaska in the late 1980s. He told us that his research had led him to believe that wherever you live when you are 9 years old is the landscape that you'll always think of as home. This includes all the plants, birds, and animals as well. For instance, if you grow up around Steller's jays when you're 9, then a Steller's jay is what a blue jay should look like. Any Scrub jay, or Piñon jay is just a poor substitute.
I've been testing out his theory ever since, wondering, "Is this true?" I think he wrote about such stuff in his earlier books, so you might glean some insights from The Sacred Paw; Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence; or Environ/mental: Essays on the Planet as Home. I hope you keep exploring this topic with us!
Wow, thank you so much -- this is so interesting. It's fascinating to think about children and, in addition to all of the social /emotional development we're used to thinking about, also considering place/ecological development and the part that plays in our experience.
I forgot to mention, Chelsea, that there could be more than one 9-year-old "home" geography. I think this happened to me because my family traveled seasonally between two very different ecosystems and they both feel like home now. So maybe Aspen could have the northeastern woods and Oklahoma as "home" geographies?
That's beautiful, thank you for that reminder. Yes - the same is true for me actually! Both Oklahoma and the place my dad moved to in Massachusetts when I was 10!
This is beautiful! I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, deep forest of conifers, moss, waterfalls. Ten years ago I moved to South Australia which is mallee gums, golden acacia, dry creeks, dry grasses. I have been here so long and it is so far from feeling like home. The last few years, since becoming a mother, I have put conscious work into rooting here and making myself at home. Since then I’ve only been back to Oregon once and while the city, the culture, did not wrap me in the peace of home, in the landscape I definitely felt the unshielding that you describe here. Finding language for and telling the story of this is so important as so many of us have been transplanted and try to make home of new places.
Thank you so much, Allana. I really resonate with this, especially what you say about becoming a mother and that being an impetus for, as you say so beautifully, that conscious work of rooting. An intentional practice of making home and finding belonging. I feel that, too.
Yearning for the Land, A Search for the Importance of Place by John Warfield Simpson. It is a slightly different take on what you are describing, leaning into the call of the landscapes of our ancestral roots. In this book Simpson says, “I yearn to be native to a place, to know the landscape in which I live, to sense its changing moods and rhythms and to pattern my life in response.” I would suggest that being native to a place is also a decision. Like falling in love, there is some flow of energy that seems beyond our control but ultimately it is a choice and you extend yourself to be met halfway by another.
Thank you so much, Diane. I will definitely check out Simpson's work. I'm also deeply curious about our relationship to our ancestral landscapes. And I love what you say and raise here--and I agree--that there is also agency and choice in our relationships to places, like a dance we can partake in.
I love this so much, Chelsea. I just started rereading Grapes of Wrath, and am finding that it addresses this sense of place imprinting on us in certain ways -- and is based in Oklahoma! <3
Ah, thank you, Laura! I actually don't think I ever read that (I don't know how that's possible having grown up there...??), but I will find a copy. And it's actually the second time the Dust Bowl has come up in conversation this week, so seems like signs are pointing me in that direction :)
This beautiful essay brought back many memories of my NW Ohio childhood, of wandering through woods and meandering through meadows, of tadpoles and fireflies, and mayapples and lupine. This essay also brought back memories of my mother and Kansas. My mother was born and raised in Kansas, and I think she brought the Kansas prairies with her when she moved with her family to Ohio. Even though I visited Kansas only once during my childhood and adolescence, I think that I experienced the essence of the Kansas prairies throughout my childhood because of my mother. In the last few days, it occurred to me that my mother had a "prairie presence", a low horizon, lots of sky spirit that gave ample room for those around her to breath and move, and to stretch and grow. I have special places in NW Ohio that are indelible and special from my childhood, and I have no doubt that through my mother, the Kansas landscape that imprinted her, imprinted me and became a part of my childhood landscape as well. It is no wonder that Kansas feels like it was a special part of my childhood, and that visiting Kansas feels like going home. And Chelsea, thank you for your writings that for me are like the prairie providing ample room for spirit to breath and move, and to stretch and grow.
Ron, I'm really grateful for these words and this beautiful idea of "prairie presence" and of how landscape imprinting can be a form of inheritance. I love how you write about your mother.
I really feel that way about my father and Nebraska. The Nebraska prairie has always held something special for me, even though I was so young when I was there that I have very few of my own memories of it. What I DO have ample memory of is my father's love for that place and how he carried it with him, and how his love of that landscape, at some point, became mine, too.
Love this idea of landscape imprinting. I just finished Clover Stroud’s The Giant on the Skyline, which beautifully explores the idea of our connection to the landscapes we love. She writes about the feeling of uprooting her family from the place that not only embodies home, but also carries the memories of the people she has lost.
Thank you so much, Courtney! That sounds like a book I'd love very much to read. And I so appreciate you raising this idea of uprooting - a very real form of grief and loss in itself.
I've been enjoying these three signs of spring, too. Anna (about to turn 5) has been collecting coltsfoot flowers for winter tea (it's a medicine for chest colds). I learned the language of the forest' in Vermont slowly, in my 20s through my 40s. I'm still learning. It gives me great joy to see how our kiddos are learning these plants and these landscapes as a first language. They'll never know not knowing the things I only discovered as an adult.
There's a great anthropology book titled 'Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache' by Keith Basso that you might enjoy exploring. It looks at the relationship of place with traditional stories, and how the indigenous knowledge contained in the stories is ties to the landscape - so that when a Western Apache person sees a particular mountain, the associated story and teaching spontaneously comes to mind. It's a fascinating exploration of the kind of 'imprinting' you describe, but with the focus on stories.
Thank you so much, Mark. I so love this idea of our children having a landscape as their "first language," such that it simply becomes enfolded into who they are and how they are in relationship to the world around them. What a gift. You and Lisa are such examples to me of how to prioritize that language and to give our children the agency to continue to discover and inhabit it themselves. Thank you.
Beautiful, beautiful. You carried me back to the woods I once stepped into, mesmerized, lily of the valley as far as my three-year-old eyes could see….
Thank you, dearest Barbara. Wow, how beautiful that we are able to be utterly transfixed at so young an age and that the power of that encounter stays with us. Miraculous!
This feeling of intense imprinting to place is what made me return to the East Coast after six years of living in idyllic Santa Barbara, CA, with it's sunny and 70 degree days, ocean air, and stunning views. I joked, living there, that it was really hard to go on vacation when almost everywhere else the weather felt less comfortable. But somehow I knew I needed the intense seasons of NY, OH, and New England to mark time, to give myself the space to rest and the ecstasy of spring energy after so much cold and wet. Now I live outside Boston and it's similar to, but not exactly the same as Western NY where I grew up. I find myself constantly adjusting my expectations of snow (much less here) and heat (much more). I would love to read about this topic of deep connection to place too, and would welcome any suggestions that you find. Another commenter suggested Wendell Berry, so I will start there. He wrote a biography of the painter Harlan Hubbard that I will look back through with this theme in mind. Thank you for your beautiful writing, this piece touched me deeply.
Thank you so much for this beautiful reflection, Anna. I also love how the seasons of New England mark time and make the turning of the year feel sensory and embodied. Also, I love that Wendell Berry wrote a biography of a painter...I'll have to check that out!
Beautiful to read your words. Having lived in Maryland for 69 years, I am wedded to the beauty of four seasons, the landscape speaks to me. My roots are deep here, as I am deeply grateful for the earth.
I believe Wendell Berry writes about deep connection to sense of place.
Yes, Barbara, "speaks" is the right word I think! There is some form of communication at work between the landscape and ourselves. Thank you.
I think whole countries can imprint themselves on us. I am English, I live in Mexico. As hard as it was to leave England I know it would be harder still to leave Mexico. But I never cease to miss the four seasons, the spring flowers (even though the trees here are spectacular in spring) and my friends have to send me photos of snow drops, bluebells, fox gloves, as the seasons change after the cold and dark of winter. It seems strange but feeling cold is something I miss, and that moment of total excitement when the first violets show through is something I yearn for.
But my home is here, there is nothing like the first rainfall to thrill me. I always go out in it and get wet. And I right now? I listen to the frogs sing at night and hope that the that first rainfall is on its way.
Is it possible for two countries so different to imprint themselves on me?
Rosalind, I can tell from how vivid and sensory and embodied your words are here, and how clearly your love for both of these places comes through, that it is absolutely possible to have two countries imprint themselves! How wonderful to have found that deep sense of home in those two places.
This whole conversation and all of these generous responses are calling to mind that Walt Whitman truth that applies to so much, "I contain multitudes" -- this seems to extend to the myriad places we contain (and that contain us as well).
Chelsea, your writing has brought back memories of a long-ago conversation with the writer and ecologist, Paul Shepard. This happened at a symposium in Sitka, Alaska in the late 1980s. He told us that his research had led him to believe that wherever you live when you are 9 years old is the landscape that you'll always think of as home. This includes all the plants, birds, and animals as well. For instance, if you grow up around Steller's jays when you're 9, then a Steller's jay is what a blue jay should look like. Any Scrub jay, or Piñon jay is just a poor substitute.
I've been testing out his theory ever since, wondering, "Is this true?" I think he wrote about such stuff in his earlier books, so you might glean some insights from The Sacred Paw; Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence; or Environ/mental: Essays on the Planet as Home. I hope you keep exploring this topic with us!
Wow, thank you so much -- this is so interesting. It's fascinating to think about children and, in addition to all of the social /emotional development we're used to thinking about, also considering place/ecological development and the part that plays in our experience.
I will definitely look up Paul Shepard's work!
I forgot to mention, Chelsea, that there could be more than one 9-year-old "home" geography. I think this happened to me because my family traveled seasonally between two very different ecosystems and they both feel like home now. So maybe Aspen could have the northeastern woods and Oklahoma as "home" geographies?
That's beautiful, thank you for that reminder. Yes - the same is true for me actually! Both Oklahoma and the place my dad moved to in Massachusetts when I was 10!
This is beautiful! I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, deep forest of conifers, moss, waterfalls. Ten years ago I moved to South Australia which is mallee gums, golden acacia, dry creeks, dry grasses. I have been here so long and it is so far from feeling like home. The last few years, since becoming a mother, I have put conscious work into rooting here and making myself at home. Since then I’ve only been back to Oregon once and while the city, the culture, did not wrap me in the peace of home, in the landscape I definitely felt the unshielding that you describe here. Finding language for and telling the story of this is so important as so many of us have been transplanted and try to make home of new places.
Thank you so much, Allana. I really resonate with this, especially what you say about becoming a mother and that being an impetus for, as you say so beautifully, that conscious work of rooting. An intentional practice of making home and finding belonging. I feel that, too.
Yearning for the Land, A Search for the Importance of Place by John Warfield Simpson. It is a slightly different take on what you are describing, leaning into the call of the landscapes of our ancestral roots. In this book Simpson says, “I yearn to be native to a place, to know the landscape in which I live, to sense its changing moods and rhythms and to pattern my life in response.” I would suggest that being native to a place is also a decision. Like falling in love, there is some flow of energy that seems beyond our control but ultimately it is a choice and you extend yourself to be met halfway by another.
Thank you so much, Diane. I will definitely check out Simpson's work. I'm also deeply curious about our relationship to our ancestral landscapes. And I love what you say and raise here--and I agree--that there is also agency and choice in our relationships to places, like a dance we can partake in.
I love this so much, Chelsea. I just started rereading Grapes of Wrath, and am finding that it addresses this sense of place imprinting on us in certain ways -- and is based in Oklahoma! <3
Ah, thank you, Laura! I actually don't think I ever read that (I don't know how that's possible having grown up there...??), but I will find a copy. And it's actually the second time the Dust Bowl has come up in conversation this week, so seems like signs are pointing me in that direction :)
This beautiful essay brought back many memories of my NW Ohio childhood, of wandering through woods and meandering through meadows, of tadpoles and fireflies, and mayapples and lupine. This essay also brought back memories of my mother and Kansas. My mother was born and raised in Kansas, and I think she brought the Kansas prairies with her when she moved with her family to Ohio. Even though I visited Kansas only once during my childhood and adolescence, I think that I experienced the essence of the Kansas prairies throughout my childhood because of my mother. In the last few days, it occurred to me that my mother had a "prairie presence", a low horizon, lots of sky spirit that gave ample room for those around her to breath and move, and to stretch and grow. I have special places in NW Ohio that are indelible and special from my childhood, and I have no doubt that through my mother, the Kansas landscape that imprinted her, imprinted me and became a part of my childhood landscape as well. It is no wonder that Kansas feels like it was a special part of my childhood, and that visiting Kansas feels like going home. And Chelsea, thank you for your writings that for me are like the prairie providing ample room for spirit to breath and move, and to stretch and grow.
Ron, I'm really grateful for these words and this beautiful idea of "prairie presence" and of how landscape imprinting can be a form of inheritance. I love how you write about your mother.
I really feel that way about my father and Nebraska. The Nebraska prairie has always held something special for me, even though I was so young when I was there that I have very few of my own memories of it. What I DO have ample memory of is my father's love for that place and how he carried it with him, and how his love of that landscape, at some point, became mine, too.
Love this idea of landscape imprinting. I just finished Clover Stroud’s The Giant on the Skyline, which beautifully explores the idea of our connection to the landscapes we love. She writes about the feeling of uprooting her family from the place that not only embodies home, but also carries the memories of the people she has lost.
Thank you so much, Courtney! That sounds like a book I'd love very much to read. And I so appreciate you raising this idea of uprooting - a very real form of grief and loss in itself.
Beautiful - thank you Chelsea!
I've been enjoying these three signs of spring, too. Anna (about to turn 5) has been collecting coltsfoot flowers for winter tea (it's a medicine for chest colds). I learned the language of the forest' in Vermont slowly, in my 20s through my 40s. I'm still learning. It gives me great joy to see how our kiddos are learning these plants and these landscapes as a first language. They'll never know not knowing the things I only discovered as an adult.
There's a great anthropology book titled 'Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache' by Keith Basso that you might enjoy exploring. It looks at the relationship of place with traditional stories, and how the indigenous knowledge contained in the stories is ties to the landscape - so that when a Western Apache person sees a particular mountain, the associated story and teaching spontaneously comes to mind. It's a fascinating exploration of the kind of 'imprinting' you describe, but with the focus on stories.
Thank you so much, Mark. I so love this idea of our children having a landscape as their "first language," such that it simply becomes enfolded into who they are and how they are in relationship to the world around them. What a gift. You and Lisa are such examples to me of how to prioritize that language and to give our children the agency to continue to discover and inhabit it themselves. Thank you.
Beautiful, beautiful. You carried me back to the woods I once stepped into, mesmerized, lily of the valley as far as my three-year-old eyes could see….
Thank you, dearest Barbara. Wow, how beautiful that we are able to be utterly transfixed at so young an age and that the power of that encounter stays with us. Miraculous!