Finding Place
The most valuable thing we can ever find in life may be right below our feet
During college, my parents moved back to northern Michigan after living far from the roaring lakeshore of Lake Michigan; they chose to return. My parents both grew up in northern Michigan, and I was born and raised there until I was seven. These lands have always been home to me, even after I left. Every holiday, every family story, and every major milestone the family talks about is set against the backdrop of the seasons of the northern world of Michigan. The buildings constructed on dirt roads in local towns, painted by my ancestors, or the plaques on school walls tell our family’s legacy tied to the hills here. Even the untold family stories that were kept boxed away have holds to the sense of belonging I feel in the northern hills along Lake Michigan.
Through the years, though, even the roots of stories and the general understanding that a place is home don’t bring a sense of belonging. I had to leave these hills to find that not only was this the place home, but that I actually belonged here. The belonging part is the invisible and intangible sense of finding place. This unfolds uniquely, and I believe it has nothing to do with our history with a place. It is the thing that can bind us and create new roots in ourselves that will find us loving, admiring, and fearlessly fighting for something. Belonging is something we all ache for, whether it be in community, place, or even in ourselves. Belonging is our common desire as humans.
Moving often as a child meant I longed to be grounded in place somewhere with each move. Like uprooting a plant and watching it learn to reestablish itself, I did this often. Some places were harder than others, but my roots grew deep, far, and quickly when I returned to northern Michigan after having our son. The roots were only the beginning.
There were many moments when I felt that deep sense of place and belonging. An invaluable sense of feeling my DNA, electrical wiring, and the very cells of my body have found their place so much so that they desire and must one day recede into the soil beneath me when the time comes. I wanted to know these lands intimately. I was not just in love but in a personal relationship between self and land; I didn’t know it existed, but when I did, I found something the world had told me only existed in material achievements. Being here absorbed and connected to the trees, lake, and soil…I learned that was far from true.
None of this surprises me that these hills speak to me so intrinsically. After all, the first air I breathed in the outside world was that of northern Michigan winter. The sands. The soil. The plants. The trees. These things were all in the cells of my body from being a small child who spent my days amongst them. As a child, I consumed the sand on the beach and drank the lake water when I swam in the summer. The snow was always a treat on snowy days. I drank the water from artesian wells in Harbor Springs for the first 7 years of my life and every time I returned thereafter. The flavor is only there, and I know it well. The minerals and soils were in my body; when a place enters your cells that way, it doesn’t leave. The land and I—one and the same. This land, even when I was away, always called to me, and I believe it is because of the deep ties through the generations of my family and the days I was enveloped and mystified with young eyes by the land around me.
The older I become, the more I value this sense of place holds. Some would say our land is a financial asset, and it is, but I see it as far more than that. Residing on these hills and wild places, which have stories written in the rings of the pines and the mycelium I cannot see, reminds me of what a gift it is to be part of those stories, even if just a blip in the greater history of the soil here.
There are moments when the sense of belonging and place is solidified, reinspired, and engaged once again in my soul when I see the colors of the fresh grasses flowering in June in our fields or how the pines dip to hold space for me under heavy snow in winter. When I stand along the lake shore in any season, I feel the power and stillness that allows me a sense of finding the same in myself. When I roll over a hill on a routine drive to town, I am awestruck by the color of the sunrise on the frozen lake. All of it reminds me that finding a place and belonging is not just something promised or handed to us— It is chosen, invested in, ongoing, and requires attention just as any relationship.
I have been thinking so much about what it means to belong to a place. To feel its hold on our souls, hearts, and bodies. To find a sense of connection, adoration, devotion, and desire to protect something. The work it takes to be held by not just soil but the way the soil lends to the landscape that then develops and writes the story of a culture and community of trees and, if we care for it well enough, people too. How the connection between self and the dimensions of nature’s web is grounding in a way we desire to find in so much else in our life.
Wandering the farms and lands of local people here and being connected to conservation work in the last few years I have been seeing that in order to find place, community, belonging, and more it begins and ends with the land we are amongst. The land identifies Leelanau and northern Michigan, as land does in many places in the world. The land of various places is what communicates lifestyle choices, community connections, and a way of being that, when humans engage in it, creates the identity of place and culture side by side. It’s symbiotic and beautiful. The rolling hills, the freshwater, the texture of the sand, the sounds of the birds, the waves, the clouds, the snow, the wildflowers, the trees in every season, and as a result they dictate life and culture and a way of being in community together.
By connecting to the land, we can connect to our community purpose. When we overdevelop and go past the threshold where the land can no longer work as part of the foundation of the community, we lose the culture that once drove the desire for that place. The balance is fine and important.
What I am getting at is that land is a community, and it is culture. It is the very lifeblood of what allows us to find a place and belonging in this big ole world. Though I see Leelanau and northern Michigan as that place for me, we can find it anywhere that has wild places or reviving them once again. We can find a sense of belonging through the land that is around us, big or small. We can find it by connecting to the communities that value the regeneration of the land. The beauty of land and place is that when humans engage in the sense of equity and equality with it, there is a community and culture that blossoms and connects all that is in proximity. Belonging and place is simply the reciprocation of the love song we sing by working with the soil and choosing to connect ourselves to it in the way we are intended to.
This winter, these thoughts have been wandering in my head as I have found solace and connection with the movement and imperfections of our shifting world. There is a sense that everything is divided, but when I look closely and sit amongst varying groups of humans who all are choosing the land as the thing worth fighting for, there are no doubts of connection and community. It continues to inspire me and my desire to pay deeper attention to nature and self and how this leads to a desire and devotion to protecting what we love and need most.
The podcast is going on hiatus for a bit. I am struggling to keep up with my current demands while taking classes for certification and more. The good news is the newsletter isn’t going anywhere!
Listen more here about why I am taking a break for a bit.
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This week off the gram
Well, I have dropped into Instagram again for a bit here and there. I needed to take time away for many reasons, but one of them was to realign my relationship with the space. After years of being an influencer or deemed that by the world, I needed to write new pathways in my head. While I have been off since Thanksgiving, I have done so. I am starting to see how to come back there, but for now, I am just easing in again here and there. I plan to write more about what I have learned but enjoy this week’s images for now. It’s been fun!
Images described left to right and top row to bottom:
So much snow this last week after my birthday. Omg. I spent so much time outside; it was all I wanted to do even though work and house stuff piled up.
Skiing in white-outs with my dad at Crystal Mountain. It's a family favorite thing to do. We tailgated to beat the weekend crowds for beers. I swear the whole state of Indiana was there.
I love this tree at the end of our driveway. I always have. It’s a sign I know I am home, which is a welcome sign when it is sideways snowing.
I celebrated my birthday with my family over the weekend. my mom made me the cake, and my sunshine girl decorated it.
speaking of Sunshine (my daughter’s nickname), she has been learning to ski (with her unicorn, of course) and can do parallel turns! Both our kids LOVE skiing and are great at it. I just had to celebrate she can turn bc if you have a kid skiing, you know it’s a big moment.
The whiteouts driving in Beulah this weekend were a ton of fun. They look bad on iPhone photos, but it was tense out there.
Just me, happy as can be to be on my skis!
Spent Monday doing a Farm tour on Old Mission Peninsula in snow shoes. It's fascinating to hear from a 3rd Generation farmer who is shifting the 130 acres his grandparents owned into a new vision. This is part of the Carbon Farming Cohort I am in with a local organization called Crosshatch.
Mike and I were making the most of the kids in school, and snow was still groomed on the trails, even if it was warming. We got a good ski in despite the warmer and slushy snow conditions.
Not pictured: Digging deep into my first course for my Permaculture Design Certificate. I love it and am excited to bring it into teaching with the kids at the school I teach this semester.
This week, I also shared these posts for subscribers:
How to Pay Attention This Week - listening to what excites you, like a peak of the sun in winter.
Designs and Dreams - The gardener is best dreaming in mid-winter.
How to Turn 37 - Last week’s Friday newsletter
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