i’ve been tired and the post i was going to do last week meandered into this week. where is that weariness coming from? well, i’m thinking a lot about what is home these days…actually have been for the last year. scratch that. make that the last five years since my mother died (i did a whole series of called “sojourning with grief” on my blog at Nurture Your Journey in 2019 that spoke of home and belonging.) but it is very present on my mind these days as i look for a new place to settle my bones. i scroll through websites listing apartments/duplexes/townhomes/etc that match my criteria. click on possibilities. set up viewings that fall through due to a property being leased before i can even get out the door (a tight market…like the one i encountered when i thought i was going to buy a home until recently.) i end the day emotionally exhausted. AND i consider that i have a place to live, access to a computer and reliable internet (both seem to be needed to get in the queue!) and have choices. it’s not like i’m being evicted or have been displaced. the “urgency” to move is self-imposed…sort of. but again, choices.
when i step away from the search and listen deeper, i encounter what Báyò Akómoláfé, has noted are “glitches” and ”cracks” in our world. what i am noticing is my concept of shelter|housing|home is shifting. these disruptions are to not just my inner world (i am not usually an anxious person, but this has created a whirlwind of anxiety.)
we live in a world where housing|shelter is swept away by mud, fire, wind, earth cracking open…& war, in what feels like an accelerated pace. where we fill the home|spaces we have, at least in america and other places of wealth, with “stuff” and when that is overflowing, we fill storage units. storage units occupying Land that could be expanses of wild foliage or modest|accessible housing or refuge for, well beings needing refuge. (and yes, i’ve used a storage unit as a holding space and in my inability to let go of some stuff, very well may use one again…i want to be honest about my own holding on to stuff here. i am sentimental, though am getting better at purging.) i also sense that my relationship to stuff comes from my parents being immigrants and starting with suitcases and a few boxes as their only belongings. from their leaving a country that had been bombed during World War II. everything is connected. it always is.
Orion magazine’s Autumn 2023 issue is focused on “Seeking Shelter, the environments of the unhoused and displaced.” reading the articles alongside my own journey of seeking a new abode causes discomfort. i think i am grateful for the discomfort? at least it is widening what i thought was an aware perspective (a bit of nervous squirming in my chair and throat clearning here.) the articles span the globe. the need for safe places to lay one’s body down and call home is not limited to america or europe or big cities or places of war. or to humans.
i live in a city where many people live on the street…in tents, in sleeping bags on the sidewalk, in cars. that city, Portland Oregon, is featured in the magazine in an article about street poets who publish work in Street Roots (“Street Roots is a nonprofit media organization intertwined with the lives of people experiencing homelessness and poverty.”) the article offered a tiny, glimpse into the stories of those i walk by. the draw of street as a known place to “settle” alongside the desire for housing|safety|warmth and always the need for dry socks (something i take for granted) in a place that often rains. these folks deserve to be met with compassion|care. to be seen.
i don’t have even an inkling of an answer to the complexity of issues surrounding those living without stable shelter. when i walk by a tent, i try to remind myself it is someone’s “home” and respect the space. and for those who need the sidewalks to maneuver wheelchairs and walkers and strollers, this too needs respect. this common space we name “city.” our use of Land (and in our culture it is “land use,” not being “with Land” as mutual being) is in conflict. again, no answers. just noticing more deeply in my bones as i look for new housing myself. how does my story overlap, or not, with those i witness? how does Land hold them? how do i see Land holding me? and how do i hold Land?
living intentionally on Land means i am connected. listening to Land with my bones means i don’t see Land as a “resource” but as a living being. over the years this has shifted my imperfect engagement with my surroundings. i slow down. consider my purchases. build relationships with Large Leaf Maples, Dark-Eye Juncos as well as my human neighbors. stop and listen to the conversation between parched Soil and first Rain.
i am late to reading Barry Lopez’s 1986 National Book Award Winner, Arctic Dreams. only a few pages in and i noticed Lopez’s noticing the upheaval to Land as oil and other human wants are encroaching on the vast Arctic and the Indigenous People who have called the Arctic home for millennia. he says in the preface:
“The depression it engenders, because so much of it seems a heedless imposition on the land and the people, a rude invasion, can lead one to despair. I brooded, like any other traveler, over these things, but the presence of the land, the sheer weight of it before the senses, more often drew me away from the contemporary issues. What, I wondered, had compelled me to bow to a horned lark? How do people imagine the landscapes they find themselves in. How does the land shape the imagination of the people who dwell in it? How does desire itself, the desire to comprehend, shape knowledge? These questions seemed to me to go deeper than the topical issues, to underlie any considerations of them.” pg xxvii
Lopez’s questions bring me back to the work of Sharon Blackie (i recommend her Substack) who has taught me so much about how Land holds stories and myths of place. i listen more keenly whether i am walking around the familiar Trees where i currently reside, sojourning to new|ancient paths when i visit England (a place i feel a strong connection to Land and home,) or anywhere i place my feet or sleep to see if there is an underlying story wanting my attention. how has the Land shaped our stories? indeed, how has our desire to reshape Land|Earth led us away from this most ancient and wise being? and as Land|Earth, in its always shifting ways, may be asking us to reconsider what shelter and home means…not only for human beings, but for all beings.
(photo: Lake District in England from when I walked the Coast to Coast in April, 2019)
what are your thoughts on shelter? what does home mean to you? what is your view of Land? have you ever been out and about…hiking in Forest or wandering about Desert or admiring Ocean’s expanse or sitting on a blanket at a city Park and sensed a current of a story and been curious where it was arising from? how might you receive it with curiosity and respect? would you like to come visit me and take some of my stuff before i move…? okay, kidding on that last one, kinda.
so before i head off on another tangent, because i sense one or two coming, (oh how i could go on about leaf blowers disrupting homes of ground Birds, Insects, Spiders, and other wee beings!) and of course Grief… i’ll leave you with a bonus video from Robin Wall Kimmerer and a poem i wrote a couple of years ago.
So until next time, please take gentle care of your heart.
anne
Bonus: Robin Wall Kimmerer, who wrote Braiding Sweetgrass (one of my favorite books,) had an opinion piece, The Turtle Mothers Have Come Ashore to Ask About an Unpaid Debt, with an accompanying YouTube with graphics and her reading via New York Times recent Climate Forward event on how turtles are adapting. something to ponder.
i wrote this poem to grapple with or honor or at least recognize a homeless gentleman, who has made his home under the I-405 bridge, close to where i set off with other Mazama Street Ramblers a couple of nights a week. he disappears when there are several tents under this stretch of roadway, then reappears when they are “cleared” away. a story within a story. i worry when he is gone. what if he has fallen ill (highly likely given the circumstances) or has been injured? i wonder who else worries about him…
holy ground
this worn tread of sidewalk is
holy ground
where he
places his worn tread shoes
just
beyond reach of
his grasp his hands wearing worn
socks for warmth
each night
under the thick thighs of I-405
laying on
mattress of cardboard,
bedding of coat|blanket|hat,
face masked in dim light
(i’ve never looked
in his eyes taught it
is wrong to stare at one
who spoke to the burning bush
his
radiance might blind me)
each night those shoes are
set out
trusting they are
watched over always
always there
each morning when overhead
traffic’s roar growls
in cadence with
his stomach’s growl
tonight
i step around worn shoes
worn body
worn life
aware of what is
sacred:
shoes
socks
a worn tread of sidewalk
that holds a man Moses
would have
recognized
as the burning bush
speaking to his
soul
easier
to walk on
while the bush burns
and
gaze at
distant stars
instead
© anne richardson