The feeling of place

By Rod Dreher • October 1, 2011, 9:59 PM

Reader Elizabeth just posted a beautiful, poetic reflection in the “Long Loneliness” thread:

But another sort of community feeling comes from having absorbed the culture and natural patterns of a place. I am Minnesotan to the bone. It isn’t due to family, though all my cousins on one side are in the area.

I’m pushing 60, have raised a child who feels Minnesotan to the bone who has a girlfriend who is Midwestern to the bone. But I don’t understand it. I adore the coasts, find mountains and tropical landscapes heartbreakingly beautiful, would love to avoid months of only 8 hours of daylight, when it is impossible to be truly warm. And yet. And yet. The bracing smell of winter migrating on Canadian winds, the giddiness from smelling thawing leaf mould in spring, the sentimental haze over the sunniest autumn days and the emotional caves we all retreat to in winter continue to thrill.

I. Can’t. Leave.

Strange as these people are, I am of them and they of me.

I would love to hear from readers who do not live where they were raised, but who, like Elizabeth, have so absorbed the culture and natural patterns of a place that they feel totally at home there. Tell us what that’s like. Tell us what you love about your place.

Today is the first day we’ve had in eastern Pennsylvania that has felt truly autumnal. It was wonderful to be at the farmer’s market today. The local apples are starting to come in. I bought two giant bags of Mutsus, Staymans, Jonagolds, and Fujis. If you’ve never had a locally grown apple, you’ve never really eaten apple. Seriously, I had my first local apple in 1988, when I was living that autumn in Washington, DC, on an internship. I bought some Virginia-grown apples at Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, and was taken aback by how flavorful they were. I had grown up on supermarket apples, and never much cared for apples because they were bland. Those Virginia apples knocked me flat, though. Years later, it was glorious to go with my wife to the Union Square farmer’s market in Manhattan and stock up on New York state apples. We made apple butter that first year we were married and living in New York. And now we’re able to enjoy Pennsylvania apples. Autumn is my favorite season, and because I’ve lived off and on in the mid-Atlantic for over a decade, I’ve come to associate the taste of fresh local apples with this time of year. And I shall miss it very much.

11 Responses to The feeling of place

Siarlys Jenkins says:

October 2, 2011 at 12:08 am

OK, I’m game. My story doesn’t quite fit the pattern, but here it is…

I was born in a small New England state, but my family moved to Wisconsin when I was two years old. My family roots include Tennessee and Pennsylvania, but Wisconsin is what I identify with. I left the state in my early twenties, and didn’t come back until my late 40s, but all the time, it was home. I have had left leanings since high school, but I learned early to despise both coasts, even when I was living there, because the real world, the real challenges, were in places like the midwest. Having moved around, I can feel “at home” in lots of places: a small town outside of Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Greenbrier valley in West Virginia, the upper Susquehana Valley in Pennsylvania, certain parts of DC and the Bronx… when I’m back, it feels like I just got home, like I had hardly been away. But still, Wisconsin is home.

I grew up on Wisconsin’s role in the Civil War, so I was glad to learn I had a Tennessee ancestor who fought in the United States Army in the same war. A little more confused, what? I have a home. But I have many homes. I can embrace almost any Place as home. But I have a sense of place about each place. And if I had not, late in life, acquired a car that I have to park on the street, I would not mind a bit that we have a few feet of snow in the winter. I love the cozy feeling of being inside with the warm lights on while a cold wind howls outside.
Hector_St_Clare says:

October 2, 2011 at 2:21 am

Hi Rod,

Like I mentioned in the other thread, I grew up in the Boston area but I live in Michigan now. This state is famous for its apple orchards, and I’ve gotten to be something of a connoisseur of the different apple varieties since moving here. I agree with you: a fresh, locally grown apple, especially one of the cool new lines like Lady Alice or Sweet Tango, is something out of this world.
Extollager says:

October 2, 2011 at 10:42 am

I grew up on the Oregon coast and in southern Oregon, places that are enormously attractive to many out-of-state folk who move there. These are beautiful places: mountains, forests, lakes, the ocean.

I moved to eastern North Dakota 22 years ago for a job. I live in one of the flattest places on the planet. I’ve made no promise to myself or my family that I/we will always live here. And yet this is home. When I visit relatives in southern Oregon I enjoy it and yet I miss home. I like the people here. This is the most neighborly place I can remember. I like walking along the Goose River two blocks from our house, with scenes that often remind me of the paintings of a great flat-region artist, Ruysdael. It’s been a great place to immerse myself, as I have done, in classic Russian literature. (Read Tolstoy’s “Master and Man” and about the snow that swirled up from below and came down from the sky. I’ve been in those storms.)

I admit, too, that I wonder if North Dakota won’t be a climate change beneficiary. Surely climate change/global warming will not be 100% bad for everyone. Our winters seem to be getting milder. But it’s true, spring flooding is worse now than when we first moved here, for warmer winters are apt to be wetter ones, too…
Jane says:

October 2, 2011 at 10:54 am

Rod, I was going to delay this e-mail to you until you and your family had had more time to recover from your sister’s death. But the topic of today’s post draws this out of me:

I’m so glad that you are returning to St. Francisville. You are so clearly the sort of person who benefits greatly from the presence of family, and tradition, and who is willing to hold up his end of that bargain, too. Through my husband, I too have a strong, 35-year connection to a rural place (actually much more rural than St. Francisville; 3-hour drive to the nearest city, which has only 50,000 people). Everything you say about the feelings of support and community cohesiveness, totally resonates. While your sister was being buried, my brother-in-law was too. He was not the beloved, inspirational person that your sister was. He was a man who lived a very challenging life, starting with a father who was distant and critical, being a high school drop-out, a turbulent marriage that finally ended, lifelong substance abuse, two children who went bad, you get the picture. And yet, his funeral was full of loving family members (well over 100, including several who traveled great distances to get there) and a few lifelong friends who cried the whole time. What I’m saying is that, in these communities, it isn’t only the capable and high-contributing members who are lifted up; it is all of them.

On the other hand, now that you’re going back to your home place, I’m looking forward to hearing about the warts that will inevitably become more noticeable to you as you settle in for the long haul.

What I hope you comment on, as time goes by, are the challenges that these places place upon their residents, as well. Race is one topic that, in Louisiana as everywhere, must come up. The absence of those for whom there was not room is another. There is the perennial issue of how to find employment in a backwater sort of place; the large number of young people who have had to move or give up any hope of stable employment. You probably have your own list. But that sense of place IS very strong, certainly among those born there and also among those who like me have spent a lot of time in a tradional culture. Yet and still, when we retire we will spend a lot of extra time in my husband’s home village(especially in May-October; this place can have snow on the ground 6 months of the year!) , but we will not abandon the city entirely. We need a church where doubt is not a character flaw. We need access to people who are not so dogmatic, and dogmatic about even the little things. And of course, we need our children.

Anyway, that’s what I hope to hear from you as you feel ready to write about it –
Peter H says:

October 2, 2011 at 12:53 pm

Relocated to Minnesota after growing up outside of Philly. I go back every so often, and while it still feels like the place I grew up, this new place has worked it’s way into me. This is home now. The rhythm of the seasons, as described by your reader, are part of it. The neighborliness of people here is another. I feel a connection to the place and people like I never felt in Pennsylvania or South Jersey.

What do I miss most? Getting real, ripe peaches from local farm stands.

We get good apples at the farmer’s market here, but two varieties I loved in Pennsylvania, winesaps and Yorks, aren’t grown here.
Scott T. says:

October 2, 2011 at 1:49 pm

I’m a transplantlanted Houstonian preparing for my 19th winter in the midwest. Love it up here, though. Wisconsin and Michigan are stunningly beautiful this time of year. I’m continually amazed at the beauty and size of these freshwater seas we call “The Great Lakes.”
The things that so thoroughly depressed me about sunbelt living- – the tyrannical billboards, the empty and abandoned Kroger store (with the new SuperDuper Mega Kroger on the other side of the overpacked freeway), bedroom communities called ‘The Oaks Of Derbyshire’ (99% pine, 1% Oak btw), expensive (and awful) chain restaurants, churches with 9000 congregants- – all seem absent in my neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. (“seem” because a lot of that stuff is here, but on a smaller scale)
One day, we may find ourselves back Texas way- – most of our friends and family are there, and circumstances may require our presence. We’d miss this place though. It’s where we (to use James Howard Kuntsler’s phrase) “dwell in a hopeful present.”
Extollager says:

October 2, 2011 at 3:57 pm

Scott T reminds me of something I like about where I have lived now for 22 years (North Dakota). By comparison with many ther places, there seems to be a lot less ugly urban development. Much of that is because there isn’t much urban development at all. But aside from a few main-drag stretches in a few cities (say S. Washington in Grand Forks — but this is a few blocks) there isn’t that much of such development. There are bland housing developments on the edges of a few cities. But mostly people live in nice un-flashy neighborhoods.

OK, I guess really I love it here.

Interesting that the people who are writing in about how they like where they live seem mostly to be Midwesterners.
Keith G. says:

October 2, 2011 at 6:12 pm

Hi, and thanks for your blog. Always great to encounter writers on the web who actually are sharing ideas and thoughts honestly.
I was born and raised in St. Louis MO, until my father took a job at a university in the far-off Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That was a long time ago! I left the area for military service, and returned due to its relatively low cost of living. The ache of missing my original home town at times is still acute. The era that I was growing up in suburban St. Louis was just a golden era in a lot of ways, but life in Upper Michigan has worked its way into my skin and bone; those things that your previous poster mentioned about the changing of the seasons is very close to my feelings, also. As far as St. Louis is concerned, I keep up with what is happening there easily now, but I just remind myself that I really am in love with the concept of the place; as Chrissie Hynde said, “My city is gone”. And I say that with no sadness! Well, just a little.
Steve Bodio says:

October 3, 2011 at 1:54 am

Said it below.Grew up around Boston, left at 29 intending to check out Montana, fell into an incredibly UN- trendy dirt- road village 100 miles SW of Albuquerque NM…

And though I traveled, somehow never left. Wrote a book about it. Realized this year that at 61 I had spent more of my life here than anywhere. My stepson was born in NM– and yesterday, so was our first grandchild.

Further: visited Boston last week for the first time in 15 years, to see my 88 year old mother who is a bit dotty (well- cared for by good siblings). I thought it would make me nostalgic.

What it made me was claustrophobic and homesick for my big dry west. 200 foot horizons– aaargh! And those narrow winding roads where you can’t see far enough to pass!! I do love my restaurants & museums, but I heaved a sigh of relief as we headed south from the Albuquerque airport for the long but straight and open shot for home, with vistas of thirty miles and more, and the peak north of our village visible 70 miles away as clear as though the distance could be measured in feet rather then miles…
steve in ohio says:

October 3, 2011 at 1:56 pm

Peter H.–next to the ocean, the fresh peaches are the best part of living in South Jersey
Jon S. says:

October 3, 2011 at 2:42 pm

I am reminded of an essay from Front Porch Republic that included this thought: “Will I die here? I don’t know. I have tried living away from here and it does not work.” Those are my thoughts after having spent some time away from my small town Midwestern roots (I now live in South Dakota). I teach college students and I am quite sure that it is good for them to get away for a while and see something other than what they have experienced (I said the same thing to my students in Chicago). But I think it is important that they seriously consider returning at some point. That’s hard because for too many reasons to mention here, small town America is drying up and it cannot be denied that there are not many opportunities here. But I do love it when the odd student here or there comes back.