Homesick For A Place I've Never Been
How to cultivate a sense of place
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Homesick For A Place I've Never Been
The modern world incentivizes homesickness. Many of us feel like we’re trapped in a train car. We’re looking through the fogged glass. Apparitions of green fields, church steeples, and hedgerows move silently beyond our comprehension and fade into a decaying memory. We feel as though we’re being pulled against our will. We’re moving into some unknown place, constructed only to provide a vague sense of recognition but nothing more. To pass the time — to keep ourselves sane — we draw shapes on the window and daydream.
Just like our products, our minds have also become victims of globalization. We’ve been around the world and back again — heard the clamor of a million voices from a million scenes. We’ve seen a million cheap new developments mimicking the world of “old”; carved out of cheap plaster and mortar instead of brick and stone. The Earth and our neighbors forget our names — the pane of glass darkens between us and our need for a sense of place.
Years ago, I talked to a young woman at work who told me she was homesick for somewhere she’d never been; a place where nature, community, and her values aligned into a feeling of “wholeness”. I didn’t understand her interpretation of this feeling, so I asked her what kept her from this place — knowing myself that these idyllic geographic locations are not hidden beneath a wall of Antarctic sea ice. She said this gnawing feeling was entirely her fault. She knew too much about people. She collected redundant facts — snapshots — of places without ever having been to them. She followed too many travel accounts on Instagram. She couldn’t quiet her mind. She wanted to insulate herself from the world, to find somewhere cozy and right but lacked the willpower to consciously drop out of the “hustle” and find it.
She told me she hated the city because nobody trusted anyone. She told me she hated small towns because everyone there was a “redneck white Republican”. She told me that the worst part of the 21st century is the endless trap of romanticization. Nothing was good enough. The grass was always greener.
The last time I saw her she’d become a hippie rave girl. She lived in a communal environment, a modern version of the summer of 69: substituting Joan Baez and Bob Dylan with ambient didgeridoo and deep bass music; meditating, daily yoga, polyamory, veganism, leather and bamboo clothes adorned with “sacred” geometrical patterns and symbols. She was pleasant when we interacted. She seemed happy. But I wondered if she’d found that sense of wholeness she’d confided in me years prior.
My Friend, the Neighborhood
I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska in a quiet suburb by the airport. I remember the names of the children I rode bikes with. I don’t remember what they looked like. I didn’t know them. It wasn’t the jokes and conversations on short walks to the lake that still hold real estate in my memory. These were only ambiguous moments: amorphous feelings, a general sense of a person surrounding me, a waking dream. What felt real, what I can picture and touch and smell and see in my mind with total clarity, is the place.
I remember the birch trees in our front yard and how they felt and the paper-thin bark that you could roll up in your fingers like you were pretending to smoke a cigarette. I remember the smells that the wind carried at the end of winter while the snow was melting, the loam and Earth and sea foam and spruce and the blossoming berries and flowers. I remember holding ladybugs and aphids in my hand. I remember how it felt to dig trenches in the snow with a frozen face and the whole body tired of laying on the couch after a long winter day.
This neighborhood had a persona, a set of interconnected parts that revealed themselves symbolically. Unlike the kids I played with each weekend, the neighborhood didn’t hide anything from me. I walked through the surrounding woods in each season. Came face-to-face with bull moose. I fell off the perch of a thin limb when my confidence exceeded my rationality. Studied the architecture of the houses along the street and thought about which “fit” the best into the surrounding landscape.
When my family eventually moved to California, the person I missed the most was Earth and the homes and the tree forts and bike jumps that dotted it.
Only because I’m an adult now, I recognize that this place would eventually feel empty too had I stayed. Childhood is a grand adventure. A revolving door of swirling images and colors and things to explore. A true sense of place requires community.
A Sense of Place
Think of tourists stepping off a cruise ship in Rome. These people have a bucket list of to-do’s, a busy weekend ahead of sights and landmarks; they have a guide — a curated window — that lends a perspective and tertiary knowledge. A frame to inhabit, an easy solution to make sense of it all. The tourists who spend good money to visit have an idea of Rome. And their mission, in part, is to confirm that this idea is valid This sense of place is a construct. A mirage. It isn’t that they won’t enjoy their time (I’d take two days in Rome) but to know a place requires cultivation. It requires social effort.
Many of us, unknowingly, are trapped in this same filter. We drift along like burnt-out tourists stuck at the all-inclusive resort; stuck in the rail car; imagining a better place — the perfect place. This is despite the increasing size of standard middle-class homes. This is despite the miracle of the motor vehicle. This is despite the plethora of quality goods in the stores lining the strip malls out of the cul-de-sac. On paper, many of us have everything we’ve ever wanted, but we still feel empty.
It feels as though our places: our cities, towns, and suburbs have a liminal “nothingness” to them. A vague recollection of an idea of what a place should be and feel like, without any of the soul or character that makes it beautiful or enticing.
All of us have inherited an idealized place in our minds.
When I think of The Shire from Lord of the Rings, I’m filled with a sense of yearning and longing. It is immeshed in nature. It is tended and cared for, tilled and shaped. The community is small and organized around shared values and interests (albeit with inhabitants slightly ignorant of the goings-on of the outside world). Natural resources are abundant and communal spaces become places of friendship, entertainment, and hearty discussion.
The little boy in me wants nothing more than to physically capture that feeling I had when reading these descriptions in Tolkien’s books. But the responsible adult understands that I can’t. It’s a baseline, an example. The “image” is also an illusion.
If I wanted to create my own Shire — indeed I do — I have to get practical. I have to understand the mortar of this ideal and work towards incentivizing laws and values that can forge it into reality.
This starts by understanding our human nature. If this sounds vague and intellectual, let me simplify:
Human beings are instinctually community-oriented Not in a “Communist” sense; rather, our entire existence (up until this strange point in time) has been one of mutual cooperation with our neighbors. We want to solve problems together. Before globalization, the village, hamlet, and town, acted as models for the desires and values of its inhabitants. (Personal reminder: seek a place that is aligned with your worldview. Think about the religious, demographic, political, and social dynamics)
Human beings are drawn to the natural world. Technology, as amazing as it is, dulls our minds like a drug. It takes us away from what is natural and good. Working in the sun, cultivating a small garden, and having the means and ability to build on your property connects us to the natural world that provides for us. (Personal reminder: seek a place where local or State government doesn’t criminalize or penalize you for growing your own food, building on your property, or — most importantly — drinking raw milk!)
Community is fostered by chance encounters and “third-places”. When communities are isolated from businesses, schools, and shops, we’re relegated to the bubble of our cars. We walk less, we don’t interact with the community. We’re closed off. This is not a modified version of the dystopian “15-minute city” where oligarchs and technocratic elites impose regulation and taxation to hold you in place. No, this is a pragmatic recognition that walking from your house to the gym, school, or restaurant surrounded by neighbors doing the same is a wonderful way to engage with others. (Personal reminder: VOTE and become active in your community to avoid strict residential zoning laws that bottle us up in cookie-cutter suburban communities. Homeschool your kids and create homeschooling groups with other neighborhood parents who share your values)
My sense of place, what I’m working to build right now in the mountains of California, cannot exist in a bustling city or empty grassland expanse. I need to be able to walk in the woods. To exist in a natural quiet. I need to be in, or close, to the countryside. Roger Scruton, an English philosopher and writer, sums up this spiritual mission better than I ever could:
The life of the countryside is one in which each generation is the custodian of the common fund of memory, and the storehouse of inherited forms.
Finally, cultivating a sense of place requires us to settle down. It requires us to find something that ticks eight out of ten of our boxes and do the impossible work of making it perfect.
If we want to find a sense of place, know the land, and build a fruitful and meaningful community, we have to be willing to throw out a transient mentally and become locals.
“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
Samwise Gamgee
As always, thanks for reading
-Joe