Enduring Places, Unaltered Spaces
I don't know how the experts draw the distinction of meaning between space and place. But in my thinking, there would be only spaces if I did not exist, and you, and the countless billions who live and have lived and will live in these spaces. There would be no place if there were no names attached or values imposed on and lived within spaces. Places are spaces that have souls-- the linking principle between Spirit and matter. We give spaces ensoulment by belonging to them. As we find meaning, gather experience and lay up memory, we make raw spaces into places where life happens through time.
On this small plot of Earth-- our rough sheltered valley in the Blue Ridge of Virginia-- I am the steward, the temporary "owner". For a time, uncertain and finite, this place will be the tableau of my life. Decades from now, I'd like to imagine that my love for and intimacy with this place will live on-- not in the abstract but in the very particulars of the view out my window, in the same footsteps I tread in my day's walk. I have left a record of these days in what I have written to my children, and ultimately, to their children from and about this place-- a field guide of sorts to its natural history and to mine. If they in future years should care to know what our lives have been like here, they will need to know this place-- to sit where I have sat, see what I have seen. And so the importance of protecting place is a matter very close to home.
I have lived in the southern mountains all my life and loved them in a generic sort of way, but only known this homeplace for a short while. Many of my neighbors in rural Virginia have had family roots for generations in these green mountains, and so have ascribed immeasurable meaning to particular stretches of creek and to rock walls, to sheltered forests and gnarled trees and high ridges-- and of course to old home places and barns that have heard the communion of human lives through an unbroken hymn of years.
But when the tax bills become greater than the modest income of those who go on trying to make a living from their farms, there are always others with no value in place and its associations with human histories, but only in the space--ready to come in with a different set of 'best use' ideas that risk turning places with souls into commodities sold to the highest bidder.
When our land is sold, the next owner would be under no obligation to feel for it what we have felt. Ownership of land confers the legal right to make decisions that have no regard for the associations and memories and values of those who came before. The next owner of this place could terrace the ridges on either side of Nameless Creek and dot the hillsides with Swiss A-frames painted in bright pastels. A trailer court would fit nicely in our pasture. Summer tourists in Airstreams could park side by side in the cool shade under the Rhododendrons at the back of our land in that most quiet place that has been our "Fortress of Solitude."
While all of us must seek ways to protect places on the larger scale from countless forms of misuse, one person alone may be able to do little on that scale, for instance, to protect the southern Appalachians from the ravages of woodchip mills or strip mining. Perhaps one person could do more to prevent their county from being overtaken by shopping malls and fast food franchises. But my wife and I can act locally in the near term and with predictable effect to protect one parcel -- our place-- for all generations to come. We are putting our land under conservation easement. And so are several of our nearest neighbors. It will be protected from a future use that does not suit its nature or its history.
A hundred years from now, should anyone chose to, they can read what I have written about these hills along the banks of Goose Creek; they can look at my pictures of the creek, the barn, the ridges above us as they are today. And they will be able to go to those same places, hear the same sounds, smell the spicebush and pennyroyal in these woods and find, perhaps, the very same peace and serenity that I found there in my walk this afternoon.
In this world where places of the heart too quickly disappear under the machinery of efficiency and speed, I will be able to grow old here in this place, pass it on, and know it will still proclaim what I have known, immutable through the decades. What few dollars we might leave to our children will quickly pass. This place protected is our true legacy.
The Ecotone topic for December 01 is "Protecting Place".
Comments
I was reading this with much interest but have stopped to quibble about this: "Perhaps one person could do more to prevent their county from being overtaken by shopping malls ..." Not the content; it's grammar again.
"... one person ... their"? How can one person be a "they" or a "their"? But I see this use everywhere - even repeatedly by Pat Holt, who wrote the Ten Mistakes article you posted a while back!
Does anyone know whether "their" is now widely considered acceptable for use as a singular pronoun? Some argue that it's the answer for avoiding use of clunky "his or her" gender-inclusive language now that "his" is unacceptable. I discussed this a couple of years ago with Bill Walsh, chief copy editor at the Washington Post. He said: "their" is still plural, and the singular/plural mix is still NOT acceptable. But what's "correct" does change over time ...
Fred, you might enjoy a look at Walsh's Web site, http://www.theslot.com/ - he exposes embarrassing mistakes made by journalists.
Posted by: Lin B | December 1, 2003 8:51 AM
Zinsser deals with this in _On Writing Well_. The problem of gender is with us now. He suggests either putting it into the second person, you, or rephrasing the sentence. In this case, I can see that you want to repeat the "one person" for emphasis and contrast, but instead of the possessive pronoun, you could simply say "the county" or "the home county." Another thing I do is just alternate. One person, her county, one person his something else. Another possibility is to turn it into "we," as in Perhaps we could do more to protect our home county. In this case, though, you're trying for the problem of the lone activist in the face of the Forces of Ugliness and Destruction. So far, though, I agree that "one person" can't protect "their" county, unless you've elsewhere referred to a group of people. The folks in the county look with dismay at the changes, but one person can't protect their county (where the they refers to the others aforementioned.)
Posted by: trish | December 1, 2003 9:31 AM
I'm an editor. The use of "their" as a non-gender specific third person singular pronoun is not yet correct, but is a very common workaround for a bug in the English language. I tend to expunge it from formal writing when I edit, in favor of recasting the sentence or using the third person singular feminine if gender is indeterminate.
The thing is, the use of "their" in this sense fills a much-needed role in the language, and unless a better workaround is created, singular "their" will almost certainly become accepted in formal writing over the next century. I use it in informal writing without hesitation.
In fact, the only reason I expunge it from formal writing is due to the word's potential to distract those who read a piece primarily for correct grammar rather than meaning. Eventually, the point will come where I will decide such people aren't worth worrying about.
Posted by: Chris Clarke | December 1, 2003 12:00 PM
Um, nice entry.
Posted by: Trey | December 1, 2003 6:05 PM
"Places are spaces that have souls"
I love this phrase. It's as good a definition as any and better than most.
Posted by: Rana | December 1, 2003 7:53 PM
Keep on painting those word pictures Fred. Photographs are wonderful for allowing others to see what a place looked like in the past but a picture cannot tell another what the experience was like living there.
Posted by: Clarence | December 2, 2003 8:40 AM
Quite by accident I landed on your site "fragments~from Floyd" while searching for historic farmhouse paint colors but I stayed awhile and completely enjoyed myself. I've lived in Texas for the last dozen years so it was so awesome to see the snow scenes similar to the ones that I loved so well in the adjacent state of West Virginia. My fifth-greatgrandfather Soloman Washington possibly died there in 1878
Posted by: Sandra Burns | September 22, 2004 8:17 PM