Love of place

 

I have a couple of friends who I believe have an obstinate view about the supposed superiority of their chosen place to live. I was just thinking about this as I made my move back to the Midwest from living in the Southwest for 22+ years. 

This is problematic because it is hard to have pleasant enough conversations without them having to justify the superiority of their choice (because places and land exist side by side with other places and land without argument), as situated in their lives. And then I remember an old New Yorker cartoon portraying a bigot's view of Manhattan and the outer boroughs (I also lived in Brooklyn, once upon a time), and figure it is the same thing--some people cannot fathom the value of places and customs that are foreign to them or that they are scared of, or have little honest interest in.

Some have bad feelings attached to places where they lost jobs, were treated badly, or places they had moved to that 'just were not home.' And I cannot relate. 

I seem to fall a little in love with any place I visit or spend any amount of time in, for offering its own uniqueness and the joy I find in experiencing it all. I've been this way all my life, from my first long-distance travel excursion, at age 15, traveling cross-country from Nebraska to Florida. The oranges, the palm trees, the fact that it rained every day, and then the storm 'burned off' and it was sunny for the rest of the day, was all new to me, and I loved the strangeness of it.

Later, when I went back to Florida and the Gulf as an adult, I was taken by the glorious pastel sunsets as compared to Arizona's intense sunset hues. Which I realize just now--I should find out the reason for this very real phenomenon. Is it because of the water vapor in the Gulf? Does Arizona's dust and dry heat have anything to do with such technicolor sunset colors? There is always something to learn from traveling and living in different areas, and it pays dividends. That's why I do it.

So it is hard for me to carry on conversations with people who hold these kinds of grudges, because I don't feel them. I lost my job, for instance, in NYC surrounding the 9/11 attacks. But I'll always remember the energy and the arts, the culture, the restaurants, and the open grocery stores with their wares on the street. And I loved the subways--for the study of people on the train and the different enclaves of people who depended on them to get to work and across town every day. There is nothing else in the world like traveling over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan on the M train for the first time, realizing the history, the engineering, and the number of people it took to put it all in place.

So now I'm here, in a new (but familiar) place, in the Midwest, and thus far I love it too. That doesn't mean I'm giving up my love for Arizona, or of any place I've visited or lived thus far--each with its own things that make it outstanding. I remember being on a train once in a more wilderness-like area of Brooklyn or Queens, and the plants, including Queen Anne's lace, surrounding the train tracks (above ground in this area) were so familiar to those which we had in Nebraska and Iowa--I realized I was still home and this was all North America.

I feel the same way when I see stands of a certain kind of fir tree that seems to flourish (and I need to find out the scientific name) across the plains, into Arizona, and along the coasts of California. I used to photograph them, against a large expanse of sky, because of the feeling I got everywhere.

And it is with this feeling I proceed.