Here, Now, and How: Thoughts on Place
How much does where we are affect who we are?
I think about place a lot. How it shapes who we are. How it doesn’t.
I grew up on the opposite coast of my parents’ extended families. The Maritimes are beautiful, but poverty and alcoholism remain problematic even now, and my parents’ choice to raise me on the Left Coast was instrumental in shaping me.
Today, I live a short stroll from the Salish Sea.
From the Salish Sea Institute: The Salish Sea is an area of spectacular beauty, biologically diverse marine waters, and rich cultural history. The international sea includes the Strait of Georgia, the Puget Sound, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State, United States. Vancouver, BC, and Seattle, WA, anchor the northern and southern portions of the ecosystem and provide dynamic economic growth and highly urbanized environments. As an international inland sea, the marine waters are managed by Canada, United States, Province of British Columbia, State of Washington, over 65 Tribes and First Nations and many local jurisdictions.
Daily, tourists from around the world blow their wad to gawk at the homes and coastline around me. I am blessed to live here.
But I live on an island.
Standing on the shore, I’m constantly reminded of a whole world outside my reach.
I enjoy isolation, always have. And I love the ocean. Going back centuries, my ancestors were people of rock and salt, waves and wind. For as far back as we go, both sides, island and coastal folks, right back to the Vikings.
My mom’s French roots hail from Brittany, France. I once tried to book an off-season cottage there, the only time I could afford to visit, and all the AirBNB hosts replied like, “You are crazy to come here in January. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. We don’t even want to be here in January.”
But I’m Canadian.
“But it’s Brittany.”
(I didn’t go.)
Some of the family on my pop’s side hails from County Cork, Ireland. Most our ancestors, though, come by way of the Outer Hebrides and the Scottish Highlands.
You gotta handle isolation and self-containment to endure those places. Yes, there are people, but the primary experience is loneliness, reflection, and a quiet awe (or fear) over our insignificance in — [gesturing widely] …all this.
That’s the stuff bred in my bones. Imprinted in my DNA.
We don’t even know what we’re comprised of when it comes to cellular memory. What does our soul require for thriving? Do we know, deep down, from whence we’ve descended?
I think we do.
When I first moved to Victoria, something about it felt like home in a way that nothing else has, and eventually I realized it’s because my people hail from similar sea-blasted regions. Bedrock, winds that blast you to the bone, salt you taste in the air, that sticks to your glasses — this marine brutality is home for me.
I belong in it. I am of it. I never, ever want to be far from it for a long time, ever again.
But also bred in my bones is the desire to escape.
When they put prisons like Alcatraz on islands, it says a lot about islands.
Lonely is a way of being when you’re an island type. I do lonely well. Maybe too well.
They now know the travel bug, that niggling need to see the world and experience new things and challenge ourselves, is encoded in our DNA. You’ve got the travel gene or you don’t. Science proved it.
The “travel gene” comes down to your body’s adrenaline regulation, essentially.
For some of us, travel and new experiences pump us up, but for others, the adrenaline released serves only to increase anxiety, and thus they feel stress, not excitement, in unfamiliar experiences.
As much as I adore being a homebody and have mastered the fine art of just being in my place in the world, I am constantly curious about other regions. I love seeing how people live. I feel honoured when they share their lives with me. I’m excited by different cultures and agog in the presence of deep civilized history, just as I’m in awe of untouched nature and natural forces.
Still, I’d die a little if this was my life forever – little ol’ me by the sea, waves crashing, staring out at a world I’m not part of, with an ocean as my prison guard.
I’m glad I know what a Thai night-market smells like on the edge of town. I’m happy I’ve experienced Saharan dust clogging my sinuses after a haboob, and know what it’s like awaking to the somewhat-unforgettable smell of a fishmonger hawking his product under my balcony in Sicily.
The island isolation isn’t something that afflicts only me — there’s a dark underbelly of resentment from some raised here, with a desperation to escape their isolation any which way they can. The Reena Virk murder, the folks who go missing, the addiction, the angst… there’s more than meets the eye on this island of mine.
I sometimes wonder, with folks who grow up feeling generationally trapped, whether they descend from deep landlocked roots, where it was always easy to move town to town, unlike here — with so few roads and so much coastline. Perhaps this new home of theirs is contrary to all that came before them.
So, place. It shapes us.
As much as I’m an island girl now, I’m also a woman raised in the urban rainforest that is Vancouver. Victoria, just across the water, really, from Vancouver — some 90-ish klicks south of the big city, across the Salish Sea — experiences 50 to 60% less rain than Raincouver does. When I first moved here, the dryness excited me, but the longer we go sans rain, the more I feel that even my soul shrivels, cracks, and dries, much like the hard, dusty trails around my home. Droughts vex me, and I come untethered in the late summer if rain doesn’t fall.
Today, a rare July rain falls and, inside my soul, I dance.
Place. It’s complicated.
Being single gives me the freedom to live where I choose, so, in a way, my travels were about exploring for some place in which I might feel more myself, more capable of being myself in ways I hadn’t fathomed yet.
They say home is where you lay your hat, and I can tell you unequivocally: Lies.
I laid my hat all around the worlds, friends, and home was nowhere to be found. Not in my heart, nor my head.
Some places hurt more to leave. Some places broke my fuckin’ heart when I was in them. Some places filled me overflowing. But none felt like they could be home, not really. I could live in them and be happy, but something would always be missing.
Today, I remain torn. I love my island home. But I miss my rainforest home. The latter comes with friends and life-time roots with places and people I have yet to shake. My island home, I’ve not yet planted those deep roots of friendship and community, and couple that with the constant isolation of island life, and yeah, something’s missing.
I’m grappling with the future now. It’s more complicated with the climate change question and the uncertain future every place faces. Do I persist in laying roots here, or do I go back home to Vancouver?
I don’t think other options are open to me, because I’ll tell you one thing seeing the world has taught me: The West Coast of Canada is one hell of a place to beat.
There’s a forlorn wistfulness that’s wrapped up in the awe-inspiring nature on this coast. There’s a peace I can’t find elsewhere, a puzzle piece that fills my me-shaped hole perfectly.
Screeching gulls, greedy seals, gnarly oaks, primal bedrock, dappling light on choppy seas, constant wind, quiet winters, the endless need to clean salt off my glasses… it’s home in a way nothing else has ever been.
It’s strange how places can be everything we need, yet still leave us wanting.
Place. It’s complicated.
Yeah, I think about this a lot. I don’t know if I’ll ever know the answers.
Maybe that’s where the fun is — asking, looking, seeking, and never finding.
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Damn. This resonates so deep that my teeth clacked while reading it.
Brilliant, important writing.
Nice to see you writing so much again! Missed your voice and the way you express things.