A Sense of Place

I joined a writing group a few weeks ago called “The St. Louis Artist’s Way”, which for the most part focuses on the work of Julia Cameron’s book of that name. This morning I woke up early to do morning pages and skim the exercises in Week Four, which is our assigned reading, looking for one that speaks to me.

The one that I hover over for an extra minute is asking me to describe my “ideal environment” in about one paragraph. “Town?” Julia asks, “Country? Swank? Cozy?” Ahhh! Now here’s something I can write about, because of course, I feel so conflicted about this nitty, gritty question of environment.

I moved from Scotland to America seventeen years ago. I can still remember coming off the plane and onto the sticky black tarmac at Chicago O’Hare (that’s how they de-planed in those days). The heat was thick and heavy as a blanket wrapped around my unwilling shoulders and the air smelled like stale french fries.

The roads I was used to in Scotland were narrow and twisty. They were made to accommodate nippy little cars, like Minis and Fiats. The towns always had a pedestrian path, usually lined with a bank of short grass at the side of each road. In college I walked everywhere, too impatient to wait for the bus when my strong legs could take me where I needed to go just as fast.

In St. Louis, the roads were massively wide, with majestic Chevys and Fords moving like stately behemoths through constantly flowing intersections that seemed impervious to the vulnerability of the frail, unarmored beings who dared to cross them. At the time I felt the message was that in America, cars were more important than humans. There often wasn't a pavement (sidewalk) in sight for miles. It was a strange new world in which the strip-mall stores looked eerily similar, mile after mile and where nothing, not even a corner shop was in comfortable walking distance.

But I've been here many years now, and I chose for various reasons, to remain. There are places in St. Louis that time has made familiar and memories have made fond. Sitting in the Hartford Coffee Company on Friday night, waiting for the members of my writing group, I wrote in my teal blue journal with my favorite pen and looked outside, past the company logo emblazoned in white on the window and beyond to the huge tree across the street, a damp, brilliant splash of green. A young hipster couple sat behind me, endearingly awkward together, perhaps on their first date. Musicians began to filter in with damp hair disheveled from the rain, carrying guitars and amps. 

Questions of environment and the complexity of what it means to live in a place that does not belong to me by birth or by choice, but (for lack of a better word) by destiny, are things that I think about often. At school last week I was having my students cut images out of magazines that represented things that made them feel calm or happy. I came across a photograph of a group of women who were making preserves in a barn, rows of glass jars lined up on a bench, dust motes floating on the rays of morning light between the wood slats in the walls. I found myself tugging the page out to keep. Is that the kind of environment that I want? I remember my horror when my husband and I went to visit family in Sabetha, Kansas and he suggested we could live there. “What would you want me to do all day,” I demanded churlishly, “dance in the corn-fields?” Did I come all the way from a small town in Scotland to live in a small town in Kansas? I think not!

When we visited Colorado, I loved the mountains, but there was so much open space ... miles upon miles of highway ending in vast suburbs organized into neat grids. “See,” my husband said proudly, “at least the roads here make sense!” I loved Boulder, but wasn't so sure about “family-friendly” Fort Collins.

I’m still not sure what environment makes sense for me. Perhaps somewhere in the Pacific Northwest where I can hear the steady heartbeat rhythm of the rain that was part of my childhood, and is now part the essence of who I am. The rain reminds me of summer days in a far-away land, and opens the doorway to reflection, and to my creative life in a way that nothing else can. I need somewhere that I can feel the peace and tranquility of the country, but still have access to the diversity, the culture, and the vibrant life that city living brings.

I look up from my writing to find that it’s raining still. All the environment I need is here this morning.  I have written, right here in this place and I know that wherever I am, I hold the key to heaven in my very own hands.

Hartford Coffee Company, South St. Louis City