Home away from home

Today’s weather, so far, on top of last night’s rain showers, is a treat. Blue skies, breeze, warm not hot. sunshine... maybe thunderstorms this evening, we’ll see. We’re definitely doing a lot better than Maui and Phoenix.

The other day I once again started picking my way through a book titled Exploring a Sense of Place. A few years ago I began working through sections of the book but it never seemed to jell. After intermittently thinking about it, I believe I now know why. The places I feel most connected to are places where I was doing things I loved doing, especially hunting and fishing things. I’ve never felt comfortable enough with, or interested enough in, botany to be really good at foraging, never mind collecting mushrooms. Then again, I tried and didn’t persist in fly-tying, maybe because I didn’t get sufficiently interested in aquatic entomology?

We’ve lived in the same place for about a quarter century. I like the place but, especially in years like this one, wish it were more interesting. Not much grew in the back yard due to a droughty summer after a very wet spring and preceding winter. We’ve seen few whitetail fawns or wild turkey poults this year. It was interesting, and very disappointing, to discover late spring or early summer that a bear had destroyed one of the bluebird nesting boxes. As with much of life, most of the time very little happens day to day and then there’s a minor or major crisis. I believe the high point so far this season has been the sandhill crane visit, and they haven’t been back.

recent visitors to the back yard

Photo by J. Harrington

I think what I’m fussing about today is I don’t seem to be able to find a satisfying balance between learning and doing and thinking and the rest of living. Uncooperative weather patterns has something to do with that. Aging in a less than graceful manner is a coconspirator. (Lots of effort goes into teaching children to to grow and become productive, but precious little to teaching us how to age gracefully, as if we were born knowing that.)

Back to my lack of a sense of place. While I acknowledge the truths of Heraclitus’ [via Plutarch] metaphor “It is not possible to step into the same river twice,” perhaps I’m past due to read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. For some time I’ve been haunted by the line from Neil Diamond’s I am I said: But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores. Duluth is not Boston and Lake Superior isn’t the Atlantic ocean. Maybe I need to discover familiar home waters where I am to complement those where I was. 

Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
1800 – 1842

^{translated from the Anishinaabemowin}

Here in my native inland sea 
From pain and sickness would I flee
And from its shores and island bright
Gather a store of sweet delight.
Lone island of the saltless sea! 
How wide, how sweet, how fresh and free
How all transporting—is the view 
Of rocks and skies and waters blue
Uniting, as a song’s sweet strains 
To tell, here nature only reigns. 
Ah, nature! here forever sway 
Far from the haunts of men away
For here, there are no sordid fears, 
No crimes, no misery, no tears
No pride of wealth; the heart to fill, 
No laws to treat my people ill. 

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