This is a very interesting subject, especially for me, as a child, I lived in many different places, and all points on the compass. By my mid-teens I had been given three different last names without knowing why. My earliest memories are of the west, the mountains and the deserts. Those are the places I like best. I didn’t realize how different I was until one day while attending a sociology class at a university the topic was brought up. The professor asked students to raise their hands when he mentioned a location where they grew up. He started with terms like ciy, country, small town, farm, south, east, etc. I looked around and realized that unlike other students, I was raising my hand with each category. It’s like someone once said, “when you’re raised by parents who are chinese, you speak chinese”, and don’t question it, until . . . yea, the sociology class. I have often thought of people who live in the same town forever and it seems to me, for reasons I can’t explain, like something out of a Hawthorne novel.
Yes, a Sense of Place. Mine starts with waking up on a cool spring morning. Even before I open my eyes, I smell the freshness and hear the whimper-will of the birds. The air is cool to breathe. I then notice the feel of worn crisp cotton sheets with the heaviness of several hand-made quilts upon me. The softness of the hand- made feather bed below. I slowly open my eyes and glory in the uptairs screened in porch at my Grandma’s house. A most lovely way the start the day as a child of the South. I know my place cause I am part of the place. I am still all these years later comfortable living on the ground owned by my ancestors for a few hundred years. Yes, A SENSE of PLACE.
Thank you for spotting, and posting, “Sense of Place.” As a native Southerner who has lived or worked in many parts of the U.S. and world, I’ve learned that my “place” remains that of my ancestors: In America we’ve been hill people since the early 19th century, moving ever westward from the North Carolina Smokies, through Tennessee and North Alabama to the Ozarks and Ouachitas of Missouri and Arkansas. I enjoy visiting flatlander and seaside friends, but I always lift up my eyes to the hills.