{Question} What does it mean to have a sense of place?

Welcome to those still falling from the sky.

Lately, I’ve been musing on what it means to have a sense of place. What is place? Is it assigned, found? Can it be both? What does it mean to be searching for it? Or to lose it?

I have find much inspiration on place through the writing of Janisse Ray and Chris La Tray, who are endlessly worthy of your attention.

These are my meditations on place from the last week of October, 2023.

If you prefer to listen to the audio version, you can do so here.

Sense of Place, definition, from anthropologists Steven Feld & Keith Basso:

'the experiential and expressive ways places are known, imagined, yearned for, held, remembered, voiced, lived, contested and struggled over’

Overnight, Thursday 26th October

Weather

It’s not a night for sleeping. I lie in bed, listening. The rain hunts the ground like a pack of hungry wolves. I’m craving stillness, rest, a space for things to quietly become.

This house of many thoughts holds the ability for silence. When everyone (finally) goes to sleep; when the sheep have moved from the field next door and the sound of lambs calling is no longer confused with that of children crying; when the words are written; when the birds are resting (where do they rest?); when the wind drops; when the rain stops.

I think of my horses. When it rains, I always think of my horses.

In the morning, I notice:

The round pen filled with water, a moat circling a mound of unmoved sand.

Dry rugs on my horse. Must be some hours since it stopped.

The slipping of the feet with the feeding of the hay. A ground still oily wet.

Half water filled black feed buckets. A horsewoman’s built-in gauge.

I walk and I look up. The clouds. I am filled with the desire not just to watch them but to know them.

Girl on the ground, knower and namer of clouds.

My eyes follow like greedy lovers. Try to stop them with my thoughts. A pearly show of meteorological seduction that always ends in tears.

My phone pings. A friend from town.

Still up for meeting? she asks. A shame about the weather!

To her and I today is something different.

To her: A minor inconvenience; a change of shoes; a jacket.

To me: A muddy schlep of hay carting and feed giving; a checking of fences; a merry-go-round of tending and of care.

I continue, one foot behind the other, this woman made of water and of bone.

Overnight, October 27^th

From my bedroom window

Last night, I saw a satellite move across the sky.

Me, lying in bed, pinned under the firm, insistent hands of my newly purchased weighted blanket.

The satellite, smooth skipping, moon walking round the sky.

It started on the left, my eye catching it as it launched from the outline of the Kowhai tree. I followed it until it disappeared beyond the outline of my window.

I wonder, who else is looking up and out their window at 9.57pm on a Friday to see a satellite on the move across the sky.

Sometimes, I call my mum.

Look up, I tell her. You see the moon?

We’re watching it together.

Place: Still searching

On Choosing Place

A remembering

I’m in a big hall, the belly of a whale. It’s too large to hold us with any sort of cosiness. Us, a small group of 8. Above, the beams of the ceiling run from right to left like a rib cage. When I walk, I do so slowly, intentionally. The echoes make the sounds of careless footsteps available for everyone to hear. This space does not feel welcoming, but it’s also not resistant. It’s neutral, ambivalent, neither here nor there. It watches out of one eye, gives the impression it would rather be somewhere else. Spaces of academia are like that to those who’ve rejected their insides. 

I am here, in my chosen land that did not birth me, to learn Te Reo Maori (the Maori language). The pamphlet says it’s for beginners. I quickly learn it’s not. When you aren’t born to a culture, or a people, there is breathed in knowledge of place and word absorbed with osmotic frequency. I have entered from the outside. I scrabble to catch up.

We begin to learn a Mihi, and a Pepeha a formal introduction that describes land and place connections. I find it beautiful, a relief, to start not with my name, but with my mountain.

Once, I asked my dad why they chose the name Jane.

“It was easy to say,” he answered.

Oh, I replied. Girl, named after words that were easy to say, is about to choose her mountain.  

Go away for a few minutes, the teacher tells us, and when you come back you can share your mihi with the group.

Tēnā koutou katoa,

Hello everybody

Ko  ……..     te māunga

My mountain is

Ko ……..  te awa/roto/moana

My river/lake/ocean is

Ko ……… te waka

My waka (canoe your ancestors arrived on) is

Ko ……… tōku iwi

My iwi/ tribe is

Nō ……. ahau

I’m from

Ko …….. tōku ingoa

My name is

Nō reira, tēna koutou, tēna koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Welcome to you, your ancestors and your descendents.

This is the format we are given.

I begin. The names of things I’ve chosen, they are un-given.

My mountains are not one.

The Blue Mountains of New South Wales

Mount Arthur in Tasmania

Mount Donna Buang in Victoria

Mount Eden, in Auckland

Māpounui, the mountain over my home

My river/lake/oceans are many:

Wentworth Falls

The pond at the bottom of our land in Bangor

The Yarra River

The Pacific Ocean

… to name a few.

To New Zealand, I arrived singly on my Waka, my canoe. I am the first.

My tribe is my family, and my friends. Spread all over the world. Not assigned but mostly chosen.

I’m technically from Australia, but sometimes, I’m not sure.

My name is Jane.

All my mountains. All my rivers. All my people.

My name is Jane. My name is Jane. My name is Jane.

Welcome to you, your ancestors, your descendents.

Welcome to those still falling from the sky.

On Childhood Place:

The Blue Mountains

Snippets of what I remember

I remember: Taking scissors and giving haircuts to the Pine Trees; dragging my mattress into my parent’s bedroom, too scared to sleep alone; kookaburras; hot sun through curtains in the summer; the Three Sisters; eucalypt oil in the sky; my rabbit, Alice, living in amongst a pile of cut off tree stumps in the empty stable out the back; taking my forty cents to buy blank notebooks at the newsagent; twenty cent bags of mixed lollies at the shop; watching Kangaroos at dusk behind the fallen logs; a VW beetle where if you lifted the car mat under the driver’s feet you could see straight down to the road; riding with my mum in front of the saddle; our old dog Ben; pretending I was the lead singer of the Bangles, belting out tunes in the empty and newly built extension of our built of bricks 60’s home; having stomach aches on Tuesdays when it was maths; eating Shepherd’s Pie every week because I didn’t want to tell my mum I didn’t like it (she thought I did); the big Plain Tree in the front paddock.

October 17^th

Place: At home, feeding my horses

I’m standing under a cluster of Blackwood Trees. It’s started raining lightly. The ground under my feet is still dry, a network of elevated roots making it possible for me to raise up higher still should that situation change. The contour of the land means I’m standing above Merc, a lead rope length away, eating his hay, the lower, thinner branches of the trees allowing just enough room for his height and width to stand sheltered and cocooned but not boxed in.

We knew the rain was coming before we felt it, before we saw the clouds open like a paper bag softly torn across their base. The strong smell of soil and rotting leaves and bugs with busy lives underfoot sent out the calling card aroma of Land Before Rain. A scent that feels damp and rich and heady, soil speaking eagerly to sky.

I lean against the rough trunk of the tree. My eyes fall on the ashen colored tones of bark mixed in with tans and browns. Some single drops of rain run in between the grooves, arms tight by their sides, heads stretched out, racing towards earth.

We are here for The Waiting. The time of day when Ada, my almost-yearling filly eats her feed- slowly, methodically, with baby chews and some obligatory, fumbling awkwardness- and I stand with Merc, lest he steal away the goodness in her bucket.

He’s finished already, moved on to his hay, the line of rope between the halter and my hand still holding a soft loop. In my busy-ness of feed making and hay transporting, I have my ear buds in, listening to a book. My stopping, The Waiting, makes that very specific type of listening suddenly seem all wrong. An inherent disrespect. A missing of something, although to whom and of what, I’m not sure. I notice all at once I’m being watched, being witnessed, by nothing and by everything at the same time.

We must miss a lot, I think to myself, by hurrying over land.

Merc reaches his nose towards me. In the position that he’s in, he could easily displace me, push me over. But he does not. His reach is gentle, enquiring, a whiskery “hey, hello”. Maybe he’s heard what I am thinking, his nudge a cue to bring me back. I reach out and instinctively rub his right eye, remove the long strands of forelock that have merged themselves with the sticky globs of waxy dust that together found their way to the corner.

He turns his head the other side; we repeat it on the left.

His ears stay soft, forward. I feel like he’s enjoying my company but what communicates that to me, I’m not sure exactly. I feel pleased. I let myself trust the feeling. So many beautiful moments lost by not trusting what we feel.

And even if it’s not the case, may my believing make it so.