I Remember This Place
The elements of a place make it seem familiar or strange, safe or dangerous, comforting or exhilarating. Gravel streambeds or rocky outcrops. Vast, open beaches or thick underbrush. Grassy fields or swampy woods. Each place has a unique combination of sunlight, darkness, wind, rain, snow, warmth, cold, open and closed spaces, hard stone and soft sand, shallow stream and deep water. Each living thing is drawn to certain places. Is it our memory of places we have been to, or is it the places our ancestors called home that speak to us?
When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. (Thoreau, Walden, p. 163). My grandparents used to take my brothers, sisters and me for long Sunday drives along the Quaboag River. As my grandfather drove slowly along the river, my grandmother searched for just the right place to stop. It had to have some shade and a picnic table, where the water wasn’t too deep. Released from the car at last, we begged to take off our shoes and splash in the cold, rocky water. The Quaboag is not a big river - more like a large stream - but there were lots of fish to see, and the water rippling over the stones made a current that was thrilling enough for small children.
The edge of a stream where the water has washed away the soil and worn the stones smooth, an opening in the woods that invites you to keep walking, to step into the sun, then sit and rest for awhile: these are the places I am drawn to.
When denning time comes, a bear may travel hundreds of miles to return to a site that stuck in her mind months before as suitable winter quarters. My question is, what is it that brings a bear back? The sound of a waterfall, the scent of whortleberries, the way the breeze brushes her fur coat smooth? (Ehrlich, Islands, The Universe, Home, p.152). How does a bear know that this is the place to make a home, that here is where her cubs will be safe? Is it a memory from her infancy, or the memory of every generation before her?
One Sunday my grandmother noticed a bear in a clearing by the Quaboag. My grandfather pulled the car to the side of the road, and we sat silently and watched as she crossed the water and strolled off into the woods. Shade, shallow water and picnic tables made it a good place to stop for awhile, for humans and bears.
In Our Natural History: The Lessons Of Lewis And Clark, Daniel Botkin writes:
The conditions are exact and the salmon exacting. A female chooses her place to spawn carefully. She tests the quality of the gravel bed by raising herself into a vertical position in the water and waving her tail vigorously, then inspecting the gravel bed. There must be just the right kind of gravel bed; loose enough to provide space for flowing water to bring oxygen to the eggs, but not so loose that the bed will easily fall apart during flood stages or high water; there must be a mixture of sizes, and the bed must be at least three times her length. If she considers the gravel of the right kind, she lays her eggs (p.199). Salmon know what home looks like and how to get there. But we have dammed the rivers, blocking their return and destroying their gravel beds. In the 1930s even Woody Guthrie, a radical singer, put aside his anti-war and picket-line songs to support the war effort and write songs for the Bonneville Power Authority. In "Grand Coulee Dam" he sang: "Roll, along, Columbia, you can ramble to the sea/ But river while your ramblin’ you can do some work for me." We see water and rocks, trees and fish, electricity and recreation. We don’t see the home that a river is.
As Lewis and Clark made their way up the Missouri River and over the Rocky Mountains, looking for a water passage to the Pacific Ocean, they measured the distances, mapped the land and the water, collected plants, birds, fish and small animals, counted the trees and the game, and speculated on the potential mineral deposits.
Botkin argues that the records of Lewis and Clark are a true indication of what that area was like before the settlers arrived, that "they are our best contact with the reality of nature" (p.3). Their mission was not to notice how breathtakingly beautiful the land was, or wonder how this mostly undisturbed environment was able to support so many living things. They were not concerned about how the mass of settlers who were on their way would affect the very things they were observing. They weren’t just surveying the area, they were taking inventory. Thoreau ,in contrast, saw nature not as parts, but as a whole:
In our most trivial walks we are constantly though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighbouring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. (Thoreau, Walden, p. 177). To Lewis and Clark, scientific knowledge and technology were important elements in their expedition. Without them, their group would not have been able to find their way. Observations and measurements, meticulously recorded, would show where they had been and what they had seen so that they could bring the information back to Thomas Jefferson. Because they mapped the landscape and named every river, stream, hill, and mountain they passed, we have a history of what that part of our country looked like before settlers arrived and changed the landscape forever. But where is our memory?
… the truth of the matter is that the journey through the Rocky Mountains ultimately depended on the assistance of the Indians who not only guided the travelers but also traded with them to provide food and horses for transportation, showed them where to hunt, fish, and gather edible vegetation, and how to build canoes and shelters. (Botkin, Our Natural History, p. 175). Native Americans had lived in these places for thousands of years. They knew their way through their homeland, without maps and compasses, and what the seasons would bring, without thermometers and telescopes. They did not rely on guns to hunt, or botanical guides to know if vegetation was safe and nutritious. Their history had been passed from generation to generation. Their own experiences and that of their elders told them what to expect and how to live in their world. The pilgrim Americans were "turned around" in a strange land, but they did not "appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature." They had already lost their memory of the land.
In Dwellings, Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw poet, writes about her travels to the Yucatan, which, according to the oral traditions of her tribe, was once their home: "To walk on this earth is to walk on a living past, on the open pages of history and geology" (p. 78). The land carries its own memories.
I have always felt the pull of the ocean. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of long days, standing in the icy water, riding waves with my dad. When I meditate, I listen to the sounds of the ocean, seagulls in the distance, salty breeze touching my skin. I hear the waves crashing over and over again until I am there, sitting on the beach, sand between my toes. When my mind becomes too restless to hear the waves, or the seagulls, I return to the ocean, sit in my chair, close my eyes, and listen. I carry that memory home with me and it nourishes me for months. My heritage is Irish. The Emerald Isle. Does my love of the ocean come from my love of my father, or the island his grandparents came from?
- To think of an island as a singular speck or a monument to human isolation is missing the point. Islands beget islands: a terrestrial island is surrounded by an island of water, which is surrounded by an island of air, all of which makes up our island universe. (Ehrlich, Islands, Universe, Home, p. 64).
Ehrlich’s island is part of a vibrant universe. Our islands are cities of concrete, surrounded by highways, surrounded by smog. We live in our island homes, surrounded by a rectangular sea of sterile green grass and orderly, bug-free, weed-free plantings, sprayed and mowed and tidied into silence.
It is the story of the robin, the bird known to everyone. To millions of Americans, the season’s first robin means that the grip of winter is broken. Its coming is an event reported in newspapers and told eagerly at the breakfast table. And as the number of migrants grows and the first mists of green appear in the woodlands, thousands of people listen for the first dawn chorus of the robins throbbing in the early morning light. But now all is changed, and not even the return of the birds may be taken for granted." (Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, p.105). Rachel Carson foretold this barren existence. As a scientist, she was able to describe in clear, concise, but poignant terms how soil, water, plants, birds, fish, animals, and humans were being affected by indiscriminate pesticide use. How will we know it is spring if there are no robins? What kind of country allows its national bird to be poisoned almost to extinction? How can I remember the ocean if I can’t hear seagulls?
There is a chorus of wings navigating the planet. Twenty million shorebirds migrate through the United States each year to arctic breeding grounds in the spring and back to their wintering sites in South America. One bird may cover as many as fifteen thousand miles in a year. (Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge, p.264). Bear River Migratory Refuge, in the basin of the Great Salt Lake, Utah, is sanctuary to over a million breeding, migrating, and wintering birds. They arrive year after year because each bird carries the memory of a safe place: memories of water, food, shelter and nesting sites. Refuge.
In the 1950s and 1960s the United States Government tested nuclear weapons in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Starting in the 1970s Terry Tempest Williams’s mother, both grandmothers and six aunts were diagnosed with breast cancer. In 1990 seven of them were dead and she had undergone three biopsies, one a "borderline malignancy." The place that was sanctuary to birds was treacherous to her and her family. While her mother was dying, the Great Salt Lake began to rise. The surrounding land was flooded. Many birds died. Many moved to other lakes. After her mother’s and grandmother’s death, the lake began to recede. The birds, still carrying memories of the refuge, started to return.
Williams’ memories are of hospitals, needles, pain, and deathbeds. Her memories are also of birds and of the lake. She has lost her mother and her beloved grandmother and does not know what the future holds for her. Her beliefs in her religion and her country have been shaken. Still, she returns to the lake - the place where her grandmother took her to watch birds. It is still a refuge.
Drinking the water, I thought how earth and sky are generous with their gifts, and how good it is to receive them. Most of us are taught, somehow, about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered. (Hogan, Dwellings, p. 43). The sun, the sky, the rain, the land. We could not survive without these things. They provide food and water, shelter, and clothing. Thoreau wrote that these are the necessities of life. He also wrote with great joy about, the pond, the loon, the animals, fish and birds, vegetation, snow, rain, the sun, spring, morning. He understood and appreciated their importance and felt connected to them. How do children growing up in the city learn to cherish such things? What places do they feel connected to?
A garden could be such a place. If every school had a garden, our children, everyone’s children, could feel the richness of the soil, rejoice in the morning sun and the evening stars, appreciate clean water, understand how food is grown, watch earthworms and bees at work. If we can help a child to love a place, to be "ecstatic with what is offered", whether it is the ocean or a stream, the forest or a city park, a hill, or the Rocky Mountains, he will choose to protect and nurture it. She will see the value in all places.
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tinges of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. (Thoreau, Walden, p. 221). I climbed Mount Toby with my son last week. Up hills, through woods, past streams and old sugar shacks. It was raining when we started; then the sun came out. He took my picture in front of a waterfall. The last climb to the top was steep, but the view from the firetower was "awesome." We could see the Connecticut River, the Holyoke Range, farms, hills, and valleys.
Thoreau traced his love for the woods, the field and the pond to the first time he saw "that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams" (p. 163). When we were ready to come down from the firetower Ryan said "Mom, I didn’t know that all this was right here, where we live." Now he does. He will remember.