Rooted in Place

What is your place in this time saying to you?

For the past month, we’ve practiced seeing more clearly through opening the senses and directing attention. Experience is rooted in where and how we place our attention. This attention creates a relationship. Every experience is also rooted in a particular place at a particular time. 

Over the past year, the term “shelter in place” has taken on new meaning. I haven’t ventured far from my home since last March. Even in pre-COVID days, for most people, the bulk of life experience happens close to home. We can’t separate ourselves from where we are and the time in which we’re living. Being aware of that context helps us to see more clearly. 

“Rerouting and deepening one’s attention to place will likely lead to an awareness of one’s participation in history and in a more than human community.” ~ Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

This attention to place has been a focus of mine for several years. I believe that it’s important to know the history of your place, to see it’s strengths and weaknesses, and to be a responsible citizen. For this month, let’s practice seeing the place where we live more clearly. I’ll offer different ways of doing just that.

Normally, when we think of “our place,” it’s in terms of a neighbourhood of people, in a particular town, in a particular state or province, in a particular country. For this week, I’d like for you to see your place in terms of a bioregion, rather than the boundaries of a city or town. 

What is a bioregion? A geographical area defined not by political boundaries but by natural boundaries and ecological systems. 

Your bioregion has a cultural and geological history, unique climate patterns and landforms. It’s composed of ecosystems - communities of living and non-living things. A bioregion is often determined by a watershed, an area of land in which the water drains into a particular body of water, eventually draining into an ocean or sea. This is my favourite way of mapping my bioregion.

I live in the Lake Ontario Watershed, where all bodies of water - streams, creeks, ponds, rivers - drain into this Great Lake. Many of the creeks flow through private property and under roads. On a smaller scale, I live in the One Mile Creek Watershed (named so because it is one mile from the Niagara River). I’ve practiced getting to know my place by walking this creek from origin to source. It’s a great meander.

“When we do notice, like all things we give our sustained attention to, the creek begins to reveal its significance. It’s a reminder that we do not live in a simulation—a streamlined world of products, results, experiences, reviews—but rather on a giant rock whose other life-forms operate according to an ancient, oozing, almost chthonic logic. Snaking through the midst of the banal everyday is a deep weirdness, a world of flowerings, decompositions, and seepages, of a million crawling things, of spores and lacy fungal filaments, of minerals reacting and things being eaten away—all just on the other side of the chain-link fence.” ~ Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

Besides the creeks, which contain their own communities of life, there are many different communities inhabiting your place. Paying attention to the more than human community can offer unexpected joys, like witnessing ducks gathering to greet the sunrise, noticing the peony bud ready to burst, or feeling the warmth of your coffee cup on a cool morning. These are experiences outside of the economic system that are firmly grounded in place.

“A life of sustained attention leads to awareness, not only of how lucky I am to be alive, but to ongoing patterns of cultural and ecological devastation around me —and the inescapable part that I play in it, should I choose to recognize it or not. Our fates are linked, to each other, to the places where we are, and everyone and everything that lives in them. In other words, simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.” ~ Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

Practice

I know that many of you are already nature lovers and probably well versed in your bioregion. If that’s the case, challenge yourself to find something new about your place this week. Choose one or more of the practices below to reorient yourself in your place and see it in new ways. 

• Map your place in terms of where the water flows. Pick a creek or stream or river in your place and follow it from its highest point to its source by foot or by car or on paper. 

• Describe your place in a paragraph, in terms of geology, culture, history, flora and fauna, and climate. Here’s my answer. I live in Onghiara (Indigenous name), where thundering waters flow between two Great Lakes over ancient rock beside Carolinian forests. Where tender fruits grow and voices of freedom are heard. Share yours on Instagram or in the comments.

• Pay attention to the flora of your place - trees, flowers, plants, weeds, etc. What’s growing, what’s decaying, what’s dormant? Observe fungi, mosses, and lichens. Befriend a tree. 

• Animals (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, waterfowl, etc.) are elusive, since they’re often on the move but even if you don’t see them you can look for the signs they leave behind – prints and tracks, droppings, rubbings on trees, trails and entrances to burrows, and vegetation lines on trees. Follow their tracks. How many different types of animals do you encounter this week? 

• Your bioregion determines the birds that live in your area as well as those that stop during migration. Which birds are you seeing from your window right now? Five Practices for Listening to the Language of Birds

• If you’re confined to your home, you can also practice seeing your home in new ways. How does the light move throughout the day? Where is the water from your tap coming from? How do you get your electricity and your food? What provides comfort and joy?

• How does your place reflect the current season? And how is it being affected by climate change?

• It’s Black History Month. What can you learn (and share) about the Black History of your place?

• Who in your neighbourhood is most impacted by sheltering in place? How can you support them?

• Where have you found happiness during this time of sheltering in place? What has been the hardest part about this time? 

What is your particular place at this time asking of you and/or what do you need? How are you responding to this challenging time, even if it means asking for help?

Resources

Reinhabitation: Body, Place, Bioregion, an excellent article by Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl

There are 185 discrete bioregions in the world. Check out yours here - Worldwide Bioregions 2020.

How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell is a fabulous book on place, attention, and reframing productivity.