The photos are beautifully lit. Maybe there’s a hand trailing over the grass or in the soil. The captions talk about things like “connection,” “ancestry,” “belonging,” “healing” or “rooted.”

More and more often lately I am seeing posts that talk about Place. Without going into a lot of details or pointing out anyone in particular, I can see certain themes emerging. . .

Guess what? It works on me too.

Even a haphazard stroll through my Instagram or here on The Commons will show you enough dew-drenched landscapes to think I should probably keep that whole “pot, meet kettle” saying front-and-centre. And you won’t get any back-talk from me — you could make the argument that almost everything I do here, my entire life here, is an argument that Place matters.

But I gotta say. . . .

Something about this language is bugging me.

Along with pot/kettle, I’m also trying very hard not to sound like a grouchy bag. I am a woman of a certain age and “Hey, Tara. Howsabout we try not to sound like a crank today” is my new mantra. So this is my promise to you. . . I’m going to do my level best not to sound like a fussy old but I’m also not going to pull my punches.

So. shall we get into it? I’m so glad you asked. Let’s.

Ok. Deep breath.

It looks to me like we’ve found another way to make Place and Land – and the lovely things those words can represent – all about . . . us.

Once Upon A Time

Small farms like the homestead here were what Dr. Jim Handy calls “tiny engines of abundance.” They were closed loops, built over generations to support the families who worked them. In Dr. Handy’s parlance, these folks didn’t have a lot of money or access to infrastructure but they did have quite a lot of available hands — their strength was in their backs and arms. With skills acquired over generations, these peasant farmers were able to turn their holdings into resilient farms that, for the most part, kept everyone in the family fed, clothed and sheltered. This was the model for literally thousands of years and it took hundreds of years to build up the expertise and the resources to keep this system running.

In many parts of the world, these sorts of farms are still fairly common. Not so in many “developed” economies, certainly in the West. In the fairly recent past, we turned our attention to export and export required an adjustment in thinking and practice. We began to extract commodities to be shipped overseas. Our modern industrial agricultural practice is highly dependent on inputs — like seed and fertilizer — and we extract economic value. Since the period between the world wars, this has become our “new normal.” This system came to be in mere decades and it took less than a generation to change an entire value system. We went from an intensive, labour and local knowledge-centred economy to an extractive, technological and infrastructure-centred economy in less time than it takes the branches of an oak sapling to reach the forest canopy.

We have undone a legacy of Place-based understanding in a fraction of the time it took to build it.

Of course, it’s not just agriculture. One could make the argument that tourism has become an extraction-based industry — the yield there isn’t pounds of soy beans or canola or beef, no, instead we’re trying to extract experience.

And now, in this time of increasing detachment from food and fibre systems, when so many are trying to find their moorings once again after too many years and generations adrift on an ocean of technology that hasn’t delivered what we were promised, we appear to be applying that same extraction mindset to land culture.

So What’s The Yield Now?

I’m so glad you asked. I think now we’re trying to extract meaning. While the methods are essentially the same, the product has radically changed. Which begs the question. . .

What happens when the thing we expect the land to produce is . . . us?

You want to feel calmer. You want to feel connected, rooted and placed. You want to feel nourished, spiritually and physically. You want to surround yourself with other people who get the same feelings from spending time “on the land.” It’s not a bad thing — it might be a bit cringey for an old bat like me when people talk like that, out loud. . . where I can hear them. . . but it’s certainly not “bad.” I’ll tip over into a vat of lyrical earth-bound prose if you give me enough of a head start, just you watch.

The Seduction Of The Short Runway

I’m a systems thinker — someone who happens to see patterns and connections, dependencies, relationships, vulnerabilities and possibility more than a linear progression of sequentially ordered steps or events (my world is a very messy place) — and I’ve become pretty adept at sniffing out some trends before they really take root.

And increasingly I am seeing posts, columns and articles that promise spiritual fulfillment or nourishment or connection or community if only the quester would “return to their roots/land/simpler way of life.” You can pick whichever one you want, they’re interchangeable. Our modern world loves a transformation. We love the promise of restoration. We love a “return” story, a redemption arc. We love tidy narratives, a logical progression, resolution and we love it all on a manageable timeline.

We want our happy ending and we want it now.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

But that’s not how this works. The promise of spiritual illumination — or connection or restoration or belonging — can absolutely happen within the context of Place and community. Absolutely it can. But it will not happen on a schedule or timeline.

Place — like “Real” in the Velveteen Rabbit — happens slowly.

— ❦ —

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

— ❦ —

So often, we think this is The Plan — Step 1, move somewhere and plant something. Step 2, learn plant names, maybe pick up a tambourine. Step 3, slow down and learn the constellations. Step 4, reconnect, bask in the smell of a summer rain shower. Step 5, arrive and Voila!! Welcome to fulfillment. That should be totally achievable, six months maybe. A year tops if you have to deal with Winter. But this misunderstands something pivotal — it assumes everything can be understood. But Place — like Real — doesn’t work on a short runway.

Not So Faaaa-aaaasssst!!!

I have lived here on the homestead since 2015, just a little over 10 years. When I hear people who have put in a solid year on their own patches of paradise, I think that’s great . . . But I also think they’ve barely begun. My inside Grouchy Old Lady mutters, “You can’t even imagine what you don’t know yet!” GOL usually needs a firm talking-to.

And just in case you think I’m getting too big for my britches, last week I sat across from a dear friend at the Blackfoot diner and he gave me a direct look from under his Blue Jays ball cap and asked me some pointy questions. Bryan Little Chief’s family has been here for thousands of years. Thousands. As ridiculous as the newly-landed may sound to me, I sound much more ridiculous to Bryan. This has been Place to the Niitsitapi since time immemorial. . . I am a rank amateur, a bare beginner. The greenest greenhorn, like ever.

From Land to Place

The transformation that takes “land” to “Place” in the human imagination is not predicated on acquisition or whose name is on the title. It’s not rooted in post volumes or social media visibility. Land doesn’t become Place because “somebody” arrived, or drew borders around it or assigned it latitude and longitude and it certainly, absolutely is not about “Lookit how smart I am.”

In my very limited experience, it’s actually quite the reverse:

The peculiar effect of knowing one place for a long time has been discovering how much I don’t know about it.

The longer I’ve been here, the less I know for sure. The depth of my ignorance is remarkable.

The Wonder Years

Which brings us to the magic of Place. Here in the affluent, acquisitive, material, extractive and dominant West, we have a cultural habit of placing technical knowledge and wonder on opposite sides of the field of play. We like to pit the tangible against the intangible. We base our entire understanding of the world on this divide but in my very small experience, I have found the reverse. Science informs the magic and wonder makes science more inspiring.

Before I came here, I knew NOTHING about grass beyond that it needed occasional cutting and Benadryl was my friend. However, since my caretaking started, I have found that the more I learned about grass – the more I spoke to scientists and ecologists and conservationists and botanists – the more extraordinary Festuca campestris became. The more I discovered about sheep husbandry, the more intimate my shepherding practice was able to be. The more I read the history of this parcel west of 5th meridian, the more aware I became of the unknowable layers swimming below the surface. Knowledge doesn’t disenchant Place. Knowledge — scientific or otherwise — makes Place particular.

And particularity is essential because otherwise “the Land” becomes a blank screen onto which humans project whatever meaning is currently missing from their lives. This particular way of knowing becomes the antidote to a warped view of place that only revolves around self.

The Truth In History

And there’s another problem — I didn’t “discover” this Place. Neither did the original homesteader who filed on this land back in 1908. At no time was the land here unknown. I am just the latest in a long line of denizens, four legs and two. There have always been previous occupants, previous communities, previous violence and failures, previous successes, previous knowledge.

There is Indigenous history, archaeological evidence, agricultural history and the presence of so many kinds extending far beyond — vastly beyond! — the documented record. It is essential in any study of Place, in any quest for belonging and roots, to acknowledge that this Place existed for a very long time without me. Godwilling, it will exist for an equally endless spool of time after.

This Place doesn’t need me. For a fragment of time, I traversed the dips and hills of this Place. For many years I was not and in just a few years, I will not be again. But for this moment right now, I am its steward. Place exists before me, after me, with me, without me, beyond me and under my feet. Place, like gravity, simply is.

From the Fenceline

This craving to have some relationship to Place, to be from somewhere you are still, is a symptom of a kind of homelessness of spirit, I think. We crave a port, somewhere to belong. Humans may be able to visit the very void of space, to descend to the deepest trenches of the ocean or ascend our own mounts of transfiguration, peaks that scrape the very atmosphere, but we don’t seem to be any closer to working out what any of it means. Perhaps it’s only natural that when none of the thunder of the Everests or Marianas proved illuminating, we would turn our attention instead to the small spaces of every day. When chasing the next new Instagram hot spot failed to inspire us for long, after we’d sucked all the meaning out of Tulum or the Giant’s Causeway or Venice, I suppose it makes sense that the pendulum would swing to the opposite extreme and we’d be treated to curated paeans to Place.

And while I think this too shall pass, for those who are curious about Place, it’s potential and it’s purpose, I think there is a path. There is, I know, because I am stumbling along it.

Understanding Place is the work of a lifetime. It will never be done. No matter what you discover, there will always be more. It will be horrifying and uncomfortable. It will cause you endless grief and the labour will be shocking. You will not love every second of it but you will swear there is nothing else like it. And when your stewardship is over, you will know, if you’re very lucky, a little more than when you started.

And your spirit will have found its Place.

This is a Living post, a post to share my thought processes, my experience and the philosophy that underpins our activities here at the homestead. It is not a how-to, “expert advice” or meant to reflect a wider experience than just my own, on my farm, here with my sheep.