Finding a Sense of Place

Here is my second college writing assignment. It's the second entry in my nature journal, to follow the previous essay I posted. It is written in response to a piece we read by Wallace Stegner--"The Sense of Place"--excerpted from his book Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West. It was a great bit of writing to read.

In a political and intellectual setting where the seemingly vast majority of environmentalist or environmentally-concerned writers focus dramatically on the cruel human impact on the environment and charge us to minimize or even eliminate our presence in it, it is interesting and rather refreshing to read the ideas of a writer who believes that the only way to really appreciate our respective corners of the world--in this case the environment--is to cause some sort of an impact upon it. A gentle and loving impact, yes, but an impact nonetheless. Stegner's essay not only provided much desired refreshment (the bitter taste from my study of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring still lingers even after a year and a half) but resonated strongly, as well. There is a part of me that is hopelessly and idyllically romantic and longs for the small rural towns of Frost and Wilder or the heather and heath of Burns and Yeats. These places' contented coexistence with the surrounding land--the mutual belonging whose praises these poets sing--is much to be desired. There, the types of growth that were (perhaps it's overly-optimistic to use the present tense) chiefly sought were growth of character and growth of garden (the word "crop" is so much less poetic than "garden"). Concerns of social mobility and economic (over)growth were of lesser importance. Selflessness triumphed over selfishness there, in those beautiful places.

Living my entire life in Southern California, a region whose culture fully embraces and embodies the concept of constant movement and motion, I understand what rootlessness can mean. Even as I lived there, I often felt that, with my busy schedule and my focus on abstracts (like the future) rather than concretes, I, too, was displaced. The process of packing and moving here to Provo proved otherwise, that in the little town of La Ca(imagine and n with a tilde here)ada, nestled in the foothills, I had found a place for myself. The unearthing of childhood treasures and the knowledge that every walk through the neighborhood or drive through town brought me closer to my last opened the floodgates on a reservoir of memories, good and bad, that I had saved away. Books, chairs, and street signs all symbolized the thoughts, feelings, and adventures of my seventeen and a half years of living.

Does this transition to college life hundreds of miles from my childhood home leave me without a place to call my own? No, it leaves me with a place under construction, if you will. I am a very lucky freshman. I am the eighth child in my family to attend BYU. I saw BYU for the first time just a couple months before my first birthday. Multiple visits a year followed that first trip every year without fail. It was so much a part of my early existence that I can't even remember when I first gained an awareness of it. Nearly every corner of campus conjures up images of long afternoons with my siblings in the Bean Museum while my mother ran errands, or exciting visits to the Eyring Science Center where I played wit hthe air cannon and tried and failed to comprehend the magnetic pendulum that swings in one direction independently of the rotation of the Earth (I still don't get it). More recent and fresh are my experiences at BYU camps where I lived on campus for five days periods and learned what the university meant and strove for. I have met my best friends at these camps (or rather these yearly sessions of the same camp--the Young Ambassador workshop). I have witnessed the first performances of songs written about BYU. I have listened to campus legends fact and fiction. My friends will fill in for my family and the dorms will substitute for my house, but there is nothing substituted or temporary about the fact that BYU is home to me. SO while I have much more of BYU to see and experience in the approaching years, BYU and I already share that mutual belonging--that sense of place.




That's all that I wrote back on Friday night. I may add more later to focus more fully on my place in nature. Lots of the choices may seem strange, but if you can read that piece by Stegner, it will make much more sense.

Today, my friends and I were talking about public comedy stunts, like the European train station that played stage to a mass-choreographed number from The Sound of Music. Here is another similar number that was performed at Disneyland earlier this summer. Yes it is authentic. My friend Alyssa is the curly brunette who enters the screen from the left at three minutes and forty-three seconds, wearing a dark read half-sweater and cutoff knee-length denim shorts. Isn't it cute???



Love,
--Christian