A Sense of Place: Childhood Memories of Northen Nevada

A Sense of Place: Childhood Memories of Northen Nevada Stephen Davis We construct our lives from stories. We define ourselves—as individuals , as family members, and as members of communities—by the stories we are told and by the stories we, in turn, teU about our Uves. We come by these stories in many ways; some, such as famüy stories, are so ingrained that they are part of the very fabric of our Uves. Elizabeth Stone points out in her book, Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Family Stories Shape Us, that these stories help us understand what it means to be a member of a particular famüy. The Joneses, for example, "have always been doctors "; the Carter men"aU died ofheart attacks before the age offorty"; Jane has the "Smith nose"; and "the Smiths don't take gufffrom anyone." It is only later in Ufe, ifat aU, that we fuUy understand the impact these stories have on our Uves. In a similar manner, our stories about place—home, neighborhood, community, and landscape—teach us about our relationship with the physical world. As I define it, "Place" is a geographic location which has been transformed through human experience, and particularly through the power of stories, into a location with deep meaning for one or more people. This process is iUustrated by a story told by a Native-American artist at a conference that I attended several years ago. She described driving in a pickup truck on a remote reservation road. She was in the cab with a friend while the kids played boisterously in the back. They came to a ridge where a series oflarge boulders formed shelters. She puUed the truck over and sat the rambunctious children in a circle on the rocks. She told them of their ancestors who were brought to this spot against their wiUs, in the dead of winter without provisions. She described their hardships and the many children and their parents who died of disease and malnutrition there. When they drove away, the children sat quiedy pondering the meaning of the story. Several weeks later the same scene unfolded as the pickup once again 114 Stephen Davis115 passed the ridge. However, this time, the loud hoots and laughter of the chüdren went süent as they passed the spot where their ancestors had suffered . That location had been transformed into a place by the power ofstory. People of any age can have profound place experiences; however, children in their formative years, from five to fifteen, tend to be most deeply affected by these experiences. In quiet moments, many people recaU memories ofchildhood homes and neighborhoods, ofsecret hiding places, places ofplay, or places offear. These seemingly insignificant images ofvacant lots, back yards, and old workshops can be more personaUy significant than the next half century ofplace memories. Chüdhood stories about place help to form the persons we become. They are the archetypes for our future understanding of home, neighborhood, community, and landscape. These memories can hold within them the germ of universal understanding . For the chüd, the intimate places ofhome and neighborhood constitute the earUest scenes ofsoUtude, daydreaming, and creativity. It is for this reason that place memories are ofparticular interest to philosophers, poets, and artists. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Space, has written, The spaces [of childhood] in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired . . . remain indekble within us, and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his soUtude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises ofthe future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret. . . . We return to them in our night dreams. The photographic works in this project have taken many forms—images with textural overlays, snapshot imagery, photo albums, and instaUations— but aU have several features in common. In each case, my method was as follows . First, I interviewed adults about their childhood place memories. I then identified...