Suggesting that the meaning fueling place can emerge from a host of sources, including those not directly related to the location or to the observer in that location, widens things to an extent that any sort of rational description seems implausible.
But I suspect there may be a way through, a path towards a viable consideration of place and all it encapsulates. It comes from a deeper consideration of that idea that the meaning attributed to a location is ultimately personal, even if it can also source from something externally generated.
This then raises some interesting questions. Would these two types of meaning conjure different senses of place for the same location? And is the sense of place that results from directly personal meaning inherently more powerful?
It’s worth taking a moment firstly to acknowledge that externally generated influences can legitimately contribute to sense of place. In fact in my experience it is not uncommon. And more specifically, place-defining meaning I’ve found can arise in the absence of any personal experience with a given location. Again, this has been the case for me more than once.
I’ve seen locations depicted in the news, online, as part of a television program for instance, that distinctly conveyed a sense of that place for me, established a meaningful connection on some level, with the landscape portrayed. This despite having never been there or even knowing anything really about that location other than what the media outlet was, at that moment, offering up to me.
But it’s been just as clear to me that knowledge alone doesn’t typically generate the necessary level of meaning, of connection. For all of the senses of place I’ve experienced via external media inputs for instance, there were many more locations I’ve seen portrayed in that manner, even when wrapped in a rich accompaniment of engaging information, that remained nothing more than, well, locations. Thanks to the media outlet I may have possessed a wealth of knowledge about that physical location, and that may have satisfied a part of my rational mind, but it did not conjure a sense of place.
So there is something triggering a sense of place for me for some externally presented landscapes, but not others. Beyond attributing that to some subconscious connection, which in fact arguably makes these senses of place internally and personally sourced rather than truly external, I’ve remained at a loss to explain them.
But it is here that I gained some insight. For in considering them more closely and honestly, I understood that these externally sourced senses of place, even if they had some sort of connection to something personally significant to me, still did not really measure up to those I experienced when present in the location itself. In other words, even the most tangible sense of place arising from an external depiction of a location could not quite equal the visceral sense of place that possessed me at times when standing within a physical landscape.
I don’t know that I’m prepared to lay it down as a requirement, as some sort of rule, but based on my experience I can’t deny that the most genuine sense of place apparently demands in situ connection to express itself fully and to its greatest potential.
Place it would seem is best sensed from within that place.
A personal example may help to illustrate this. I’ve chosen this one because it represents a particularly powerful sense of place for me, indeed one that I can still feel, thirty years and many life experiences later.
But I highlight it also because it is an example of in situ sense of place for a landscape with which I had no direct personal connection, a landscape I had never visited or seen before that day. So it certainly wasn’t any deep knowledge or memory or other purely cerebral catalyst that triggered things. Like many I had some prior knowledge of historical events relevant for this landscape, but it was simply rational understanding for me, little else.
It was in fact the being there, that more than anything prompted my strongly felt sense of place.
The landscape in question was that associated with what was then called Custer Battlefield National Monument, in southeastern Montana, in the United States. I passed through there in the crux of the summer of 1984, during a cross-country road trip.
As national monuments go, it was a fairly small and decidedly nondescript one, a diminutive speck situated amongst the endless rolling prairie and vistas of the Crow Reservation lands and in the heart of the aptly named Big Sky Country. It did have the advantage of proximity to Interstate 90, along which I was travelling west from South Dakota at the time, and I was likely drawn off that particular exit by one of those familiar brown information signs that always seemed to pique my interest when travelling in the US.
I think to properly uncover this sense of place there are some personal settings of relevance and worth noting at this point.
First, the trip that summer was in every sense a striking out on a new life for me. I was on my way to Oregon to relocate myself there and give it a go. In that sense everything on that journey was understandably more vivid, more present, for me. I was genuinely on my own, literally driving into the unknown, but because of that also possessed with a strong sense of purpose, of mission. This I knew was exactly where I was meant to be.
The drive was also designed specifically to cross the length of the northern Great Plains, and allow exploration of a region that had long represented an intriguing blank spot on my personal map. It did not disappoint. It was in fact the defining portion of that long trip across the US, affecting me in profound ways.
Lastly, though my knowledge of the events at Little Bighorn, so-called Custer’s Last Stand, was elemental, the product of history taught every school child in the US, the battle as both a decisive victory for the local tribes and the start of the demise of their cultural dominance in the region was particularly intriguing to me. Within this part of the US, moreover, evidence of native cultures and histories was much more prominent than anything I had experienced growing up on the East Coast and I was eager to absorb as much as I could. I was also at this stage of my travels fresh off a particularly meaningful visit to the Black Hills.
So in terms of the results of that summer’s day, maybe these personal factors all served to set me up, as it were, to prime me for a unique experience with place.
But it unequivocally took the experience of being there, in the thick heat of summer, with the distinct smell of the land, the steady breeze constantly changing the color and textures of the grasses on the folded hills stretching out in every direction, to bring it all together. It took the fact that I had the grounds nearly to myself that afternoon and spent my time in the resulting profundity of the silence, walking the trails to the small markers where prominent native participants, Custer’s men and he himself had fallen on that day one hundred and eight years prior. My reaction I was noticing was becoming more emotional, spiritual rather than intellectual, as would normally be the case when visiting an historical site like this.
The location that day was generating a powerfully reflective and contemplative disposition and it seemed to grow stronger the longer I stayed on the site. It was only to become even more prevalent.
Some distance from the visitor information center, near a small cluster of trees, stood two large white canvas tipis. A small homage I imagined to the native participants in the battle that day, at a national monument clearly designed to highlight the stories of Custer and the men of the 7th Cavalry Regiment.
Whilst deciding which one to look inside, or if that was even an option, a tourist couple emerged from one of the tipis, bidding goodbye to someone inside, so I decided to follow their lead. Lifting the door flap I entered the tipi and immediately noticed a welcome drop in temperature, the shape of the tipi creating a natural chimney effect on the hot air of the afternoon. The ground was covered thick with animal hides and I was immediately invited to sit and then offered from a plastic bag something in the way of a local plant trail mix by a young man seated on the ground.
I spent the better part of the next hour speaking with this man, who was Cheyenne and who confirmed he was indeed the sole source of the Native American perspective offered by the monument. We spoke about the history, the battle, from the Cheyenne and Lakota and Arapaho perspective I’m sure, but we also spoke of a lot of things I recall, letting the conversation wander where it would in the warmth and quiet of a lazy afternoon. I was affected by his natural sense of calm, especially as concerned the battle. He was gracious in the way he shared his knowledge and enthusiastically presented his people’s perspective, but noticeably absent of any sort of personal agenda. He seemed sincerely interested in telling me his story and likewise in hearing my own.
Eventually I left his company and the tipi, emerging back into the heat of the late afternoon, changed somehow, with heightened awareness at the very least. Spending a last few minutes in this landscape, looking out over the grasslands and network of twisting coulees in the late afternoon light, contemplating it all in a new way, I was overcome with what I would now describe as a sense of place.
Importantly in this instance, I was absorbing that sense directly from the sights, sounds and smells around me while empowered with the understanding and emotional sensitivity I had gained from my walk on the hillsides and my time with the young man in the tipi. It may very well have been a combination of factors that brought this sense of place upon me just then, including to some extent the state I myself contributed to that particular point along my journey west, but it was my physical presence in the landscape that made it resonate.
In that moment, standing firmly on that hillside and open fully to the experience, I was seamlessly aligned with my context.
place 