Welcome to Day 24 of 31 Days of A Sense of Place.
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What gives me the strongest sense of place is having friends, good friends, friends who will walk into your house without knocking, friends with whom you break bread (and crack a bottle of wine) once or twice a week or more, friends you see daily or at least weekly and are glad of the chance most of the time. Friends with whom talking about art, culture, politics, religion, ideas, books, animals, plants, philosophy, ways of being, ways of living, come naturally and easily, or haltingly and awkwardly. And especially friends who, like me, are almost ecstatic to be outside, gardening, hiking, walking, swimming, snowshoeing and skiing, doing art, birding, dining al fresco, bicycling, feeling part of their geographic, climatologic, topographic here and now place.
I mean, seriously? Great food.
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I feel fortunate to have such friends in the place where I live now. One is moving away next month, which is dreadful and gut-wrenching for those she’s leaving. I might be moving away, and I wonder how I could ever find such loved and valued companions again. Not every place offers these kinds of friends, this kind of conversation, this kind of community, this willingness and desire to share food, wine, place, space, homes, evenings, mornings, walks, dogs, campfires, ideas, hugs.
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And did I mention their gardens? Some wild, some tame, some new and flourishing, some rampant after years of tending and neglect, some experimental, some artful, all beautiful and touched by enthusiasm and devotion. (Pause cursor for captions, click on any for larger view.)
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Friends, and their places, give me a sense of place.
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Thanks for checking in. Be sure to see what the other 31 Dayers are writing about.
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This project is a bit like Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird, in that I’m writing about a sense of place from vantage points that may not obviously connect with each other. I’m not going to attempt to tie them together. In the end, these 31 days of looking at a sense of place may overlap, contradict, form a whole, or collapse like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard would say. That remains to be seen. Thanks for stopping by.
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