Finding Home
Places We Live, Places We Love
Swamp Rose Mallow / Coralville, IA
Finding Home
I read most of Two Trees Make a Forest on the way to Aurora, Colorado for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold Conference. I started the book a few weeks before, and though I found Lee’s description of Taiwan initially fascinating, I found it difficult to keep going because (to my shame) I have little interest in geology past its visual appeal. The historical timeline was making me itchy with AP history class flashbacks too. I’d rather sit through a gory zombie movie and deal with the ensuing nightmares than face another DBQ (document-based question). However, Lee’s writing is beautiful, particularly when she talks about anything plant-related. Once I really sat with her writing, I very much wanted to hike with her and see what she saw. The stories of her grandparents brought me to tears on more than one occasion. (Why do I keep reading books that make me cry on planes?) There were bits of this book that will stick with me for a long time.
Waterfall, Bluff Lake Nature Center / Aurora, CO
If, like me, you had trouble visualizing Taiwan, here’s a pinterest board to help. I also tried to find the nature writing Lee mentions, and instead came across a special edition of The Willowherb Review: “Taiwanese Nature Writing in Translation.” You’ll never guess who the editor is.
It had to be Lee’s writing that made me think about Colorado—a place I do not feel designed for with its high elevation, dry air, and limited greenery—from the perspective of someone who enjoys living there.
Bluff Lake Nature Center, not far from our hotel, made that easy. While Lucas went for a run, I took a leisurely walk and quietly talked with my sister. There was a giant bird’s nest constructed for kids to play in, a peaceful waterfall, black-tailed prairie dogs, friendly fellow hikers, and numerous gorgeous views.
Posters, Bluff Lake Nature Center / Aurora, CO
We considered moving from the Midwest a few times when we were younger, but I’m glad we landed in Wisconsin. My sense of home comes from lush woods, a rainbow array of wildflowers, and varying bodies of water. The shade of oak trees, full sun over expansive fields, noisy bugs, and talkative birds. When we first moved from Iowa to Illinois, I hadn’t lived anywhere without a river. It felt like living in a city carved out of a parking lot (with a few areas excepted). It was a place I lived, not a place I loved. Not home. We headed north. Madison felt like home-home, like my childhood backyard expanded, winding through the city and through the county and up the state. Everything that had been good, only more of it.
What landscape do you consider home?
In Two Trees Make a Forest, Lee explores the land of her family, a place inevitably changed since their time there, yet her mother seems connected to that land more deeply than the place she’s lived the last several decades. I’ve never gone so far, for so long, that I can truly understand that feeling—only imagine it. I haven’t even had to say goodbye to my childhood home.
Have you found a new home in a different landscape? Do you want to?
What I don’t have to imagine is the unease at the negative changes in places I love. Changes that, in a more responsible world, would not be happening. In our July book, The End of Night, Paul Bogard described solastalgia as “missing a loved place that still exists but to which the old birds and plants no longer come.” I tried to explain solastalgia to Lucas (without a definition handy) and he said, “oh, okay, so not the middle-aged ‘who moved my cheese’ feeling when the Great Dane changes their peanut stew recipe.”* If only. But I really do believe that we can turn this around.
Things We Can Do This Fall:
Leave the leaves (Xerces Society tips, potentially dependent on your geographic location)
Plant seeds (Midwesterners see Prairie Nursery’s guide here—plants are done for the season but you can still buy seeds)
Seal up gaps in your home to keep out furry intruders (avoid rodenticides, which also kill birds of prey)
Visit & donate to your local nature reserve (and bring friends!)—there is so much beauty to witness all year round
Vote
As our small actions add up, we might find ourselves building a world even better than we remember.
*The Great Dane’s menu was Lucas’s favorite restaurant, and the menu changes have bothered him for years. The stew and the nachos are routinely mourned by us both. If you, too, have been suffering that loss, Lucas recently found the stew recipe: Great Dane Inner Warmth Squash-Peanut Stew.
My mom recently gave me some homework and papers from childhood, and this masterpiece was among them.
October’s Book
We’re tunneling into Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet by Will Hunt this month. You can find it in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. I’m hoping you’ll find it seasonally appropriate. :)
I’ll be back early November to chat about Underground, hopefully with some doodles inspired by Alicia Aradilla’s Watercolor Travel Journal class using a Beam Paints Travel Card or Procreate.
