Welcome to the Loess Hills Prairie, I guess.
I'm trying to find my connection to my place, and face all the big questions that swirls up. I am now back living in the place I spent most of my childhood. I love it here; I missed here when I was living anywhere else. I don't fit in here, socially and especially politically, but I do feel like I belong here. This place is the butt of so many jokes, about the backward people, the terrible politics, the lack of anything ecologically interesting, but I find it beautiful.
But for all that, I know so little about the life of this place. A couple years ago, I wasn't sure where the creek my kids play in started or ended, or even what it was called - we just talked about "the bridge." I didn't know who lived here before Europeans came here - I had some vague ideas based on place names, but no actual knowledge. I didn't think about where how our runoff got to the Missouri River or what ecoregion I might be living in.
My interest in the world around me really took off when my kids were little. I believed that if I wanted them to grow up to heal our planet, they needed to love the world first. Which is easy to facilitate, with little kids. Time is really all it takes. What's less easy is to answer their questions. Everyone knows a blackbird and a cardinal, but my oldest asked about starlings and house finches and wrens too. And I suddenly knew what I didn't know. I spent quite a bit of time with field guides - lots of field guides.
I still don't know all the facts, but I'm ready for a more complex relationship to this place. There's so many different strands to this sense of belonging and home: connection to the land, herbalism, bioregional knowledge, living as a descendant of colonizers, mythology, ethnic heritage, food resources, my responsibility to fixing the damaged ecosystem - it's a bit of a mess. So I'm hoping that these writings will help me tease the knots out, and braid it into a strong connection to my home.
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