The Sacred Landscape of Suburbia

THE SUBURBS by Enid Derham from Poems (University of Melbourne Press)

Miles and miles of quiet houses, every house a harbour,
Each for some unquiet soul a haven and a home,
Pleasant fires for winter nights, for sun the trellised arbour,
Earth the solid underfoot, and heaven for a dome.

Washed by storms of cleansing rain, and sweetened with affliction,
The hidden wells of Love are heard in one low-murmuring voice
That rises from this close-meshed life so like a benediction
That, listening to it, in my heart I almost dare rejoice.
    

Miramachi Bay, New Brunswick

In my April Carpe Libris post, I mentioned Dorian Llywelyn's book, Sacred Place, Chosen People and the questions it was stirring in me:   Do I truly feel loss of a sense of place?  Or is it a case of devaluation-- not crediting the ways in which growing up in suburbia has shaped me as being as remarkable as if I had been born in a fishing village on the rugged coast of the New Brunswick like my Grandpa Simpson or spent part of my formative years in an orphanage in D.C., as my other grandfather did?  In a post on her blog yesterday, my friend who writes From the Hatchery told how she used to ask her students to self-identify as one of four categories:  city people, wilderness people, city people who are fascinated by the wilderness, and wilderness people who are fascinated by cities. 
As I thought about what my response would be to that question, I realized that the suburbs is so much a part of who I am, I don't know how I'd answer. 

Perhaps I'm lean towards one of the wilderness categories.  Lately I've been spending more time in my backyard . . . foraging from the mulberry trees that popped up between our yard and our neighbor's; liberating the back fence and hydrangea bushes from the ivy (poison and regular) and wild grape that's kept them prisoner for the past couple years; surveying my wildflower garden to see if the doe who keeps visiting in the middle of the night has eaten anything other than the echinacea.  In noticing (and at times affecting) these day to day and year to year changes I've been thinking about how the landscape of my yard and my relationship to that landscape has changed as well. 

When my parents first moved to this house I was a little over 2 years old.  Although I remember the curtains they hung in my new bedroom, my first memories of the backyard come a few years later.  The hill that leads to the fence that separates our yard from the house that backs up to it seemed enormous, especially in winter when I'd lug my silver dishpan sled to the top and work up my nerve to slide down.  I'd first start at the gentlest slope and eventually become fearless enough to move the other side where the hill was the steepest.

Conquering the hill was evidently a frequent activity in my younger years.  My mother once told me I'd spend hours trying to climb to its top, taking a few steps up then tumbling back down.  I was (and granted still am) not that physically coordinated so it could have been my chubby little legs that were as much of a challenge as the grade of the hill itself in my efforts.  No matter, I persisted.

I wish I could say I remember what it felt like to be that determined, make that effort, reach the summit, but I don't.  No matter, when I now walk up the hill (four long strides on the gentle slope and seven on the steep part-- I counted the other day) I still remember how looming it once seemed and how small it is in reality. 

It reminds me of a passage I read in Llywelyn's book that talks about how in many Native American cultures, where is often more important in a story than when.  As one elder explains it, the landscape in which a story is set becomes a moral mnemonic, a symbol for the lesson that the hearers of the tale can carry with them.  I think many of us have this sense of place as symbol whether or not they recognize it.  For countless people, seeing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial evokes images of the struggle for justice and equality because of the dream that was shared in that particular location.  The place has become a symbol for the story. When this happens in a community, the location often becomes a place of pilgrimage.  When it happens for an individual, it can also become a holy place, sacred ground. 

Maybe this is why I instinctively want to take off my shoes when I walk up the hill in my back yard-- the acknowledgement of holy ground, even in the middle of suburbia.