Place is a story we tell ourselves
Place is a story we tell ourselves
by Kate Leary
Place is a story we tell ourselves. The physical world is there, right out the window, with its piney hills or city streets, rolling plains or red-rock desert, tended fields or rushing rivers. Yet that alone isn’t place. Geography cannot capture its breadth and richness. Even the finest examination of geologic faults and fissures never quite hits bedrock truth. The neat maps we use to guide ourselves through the messiness of our world are always falling short.
In Camas we wish to learn about the west, but which west? The mountains worked by miners are different from those that climbers ascend to. Foresters walk through different woods than backpackers who tread on yet different paths than biologists or loggers. There is the west of rafters and of ranchers, of urban-dwellers, of tribes. Place is a tapestry of voices, a clamor and a conversation.
If place is a story we tell, then it is also one that we have a chance to retell, to revise and reinterpret. Place grows as new voices are added and new ideas blossom, inviting us to see the same beloved landscapes with fresh eyes. It’s a project engaged in by a growing community, scattered across biomes, time zones and worldviews, but united by the conviction that the land we live in matters. What we are asking you is no less than that: tell us your west.
Kate Leary is a second-year grad student in the environmental studies program at the University of Montana.