No Place Like It
We’ve sheltered in place, moved from place to place, felt out of place, all over the place and between a rock and a hard place. We’ve fallen into place, arrived at the right place at the wrong time and yearned for our own special place under the sun.
It seems that place matters. A whole lot.
I think it’s because they activate all five senses. We know the places we know sensorally - what they feel-smell-sound-look-and taste like. A specific place imprints on us and is a part of making us, us. The places we ache for do too as we sense how they might transform us into who we want to be.
I’ve had a lifelong love affair with Chicago and Philadelphia. I love both cities deeply, madly. But I often hanker for a quieter, slower life in the country and I periodically test this desire with rentals in the mountains or woods or by the lake, beach or sea. I feel palpably different in each location, as if the sound and aroma, landscape and gastronomy, flora and fauna yank something out of me that had previously been sleeping.
Being near water or a view of the mountains changes how I see.
Wide open spaces allows me more room to think.
Cramped urban spaces encourages my desire for cozy and private.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about place as I prepare for a daylong workshop titled “Writing in Place,” in Door County, Wisconsin this August. It will be my first daylong workshop held IN PERSON since 2019 - in a magnificent place - the magical campus of The Clearing Folk School along the Green Bay shoreline. Those 128 acres are the former summer residence of landscape architect Jens Jensen, a place that has been called the Cape Cod of the Midwest.
Our exploration of place is a very human quality, an extension of our freedom, mobility and curiosity. And we’re not likely to stop.
“We shall not cease from exploration,” wrote T.S. Eliot. ”And the end of all our exploring we will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
Join me for a day of returning to places you once knew or visiting those that lure on the page so that you might see them or know them in new ways, as if for the first time.
Upcoming this Summer
“Writing Wrongs,” Lighthouse Lit Fest, June 14 (online)
“Deconstructing Didion,” Story Studio Chicago, June 29 (online)