Five Easy Steps to a Bigger Home
Back in February, when there was still two feet of snow in the woods, I went backcountry skiing with my good friend Larry Meyer up in Newaygo County. It was a sunny day in the mid teens and I was in front breaking trail. It was hard work, and I was breathing deeply in the brilliant sunshine. With Larry dropping behind to give us both space in the silence of the woods, the ski gave me some undisturbed time to think.
The route we were skiing was a trail that Larry and I worked hard to plan, layout, and build in partnership with volunteers from the North Country Trail Association and staff from the Huron-Manistee National Forest. As I skied, I thought about how all our volunteer work had made me intimately familiar the place where we found ourselves on that glorious winter afternoon.
I was at home.
I can claim those winter woods as my home because of the many hours Larry, others, and I had spent to take care of a special piece of land. We walked it in all seasons to plan the route. Then we spent many hours there building a trail that will allow others to get to know and enjoy the special landscape—its cold creeks, vernal ponds, wetlands, forests, spring ephemerals, and the silence of a sunny winter day.
People are often surprised to learn that I live in an old house on a postage stamp size lot in urban, downtown Grand Rapids. What they don’t realize is that my home is much larger than that 40’x100’ lot and my 1,400 square foot house.
My home is west Michigan, and I know it more intimately than some people know their own back yards.
Somewhere around 1990, I became familiar with the concept of “placemaking.” For urban planners and many land use types, placemaking connotes wise planning and intentional development, often on a very human scale, to help the people who live there feel comfortable with their environment. That is important work, but it does not stop there.
Some of the people who fed my infatuation with placemaking were the artists, poets, literary types, and other place lovers at the Orion Society. Their ideas and creativity expanded my thinking about place, of home.
When thinking of placemaking, I often thought of my childhood home in New York’s scenic and historic Hudson Valley. I missed the mountains and the deep history of the place. I missed the landscapes, small towns, and villages that evoked stories from Washington Irving and paintings from Frederic Church. The sense of place that I developed as a child was a result of that enchanted place, and I longed to be there.
Somehow, without intention, I slowly and imperceptibly grew roots into the glacial outwash of west Michigan. My roots grew deep like those of the native prairie grasses that once grew in the oak savannah where my house now stands. And now this is the place I call home.
It gives me a profound sense of satisfaction to really know the place that I live. Whether it is the sweet terroir of the carrots plucked from the light loam of my garden soil, the reliable generosity of a secret trout stream, or the familiarity of a landscape while skiing with Larry, these little things in my daily life give me the deep comfort of being home.
My home has expanded far beyond the small lot I care for on Sweet Street. It is west Michigan.
It is as expansive as the broad, ever-flowing Muskegon River and as intimate as a small patch of stunning old growth hickories wedged between depleted corn and soybean fields in Kent County. It is as raucous and noisy as a windy winter day in the dunes along lake Michigan, and as quiet as an autumn campsite deep in the Manistee National Forest—so quiet you can hear the leaves dropping off the aspen trees as their petioles freeze and let loose.
My home, like any good home, has added richly to my life. When I reflect on how I got here, a couple of things come to mind. Some were intentional steps, other were frank accidents. But each step was important.
Stay Put. There is no replacement for time. My longevity in west Michigan has afforded me the opportunity to really get to know the place. One can’t become familiar with something without putting in the time. And time pays dividends. Think big. Think in terms of decades.
Get Out. One cannot learn about a place unless it is experienced firsthand. Books and the internet are no replacement for the real thing. Get out. Walk. Sleep outdoors. Return to places in all seasons. Explore all the rooms of your home.
Learn the Flowers. Poet and Orion Society advisor Gary Snyder advises us to “stay together — learn the flowers — go light.” I think he is instructing us of the importance of really getting to know this earth household by learning the flowers, the trees, the insects, and the song of the birds who share this place with us —each of them important to the preservation of our home. Go deep. Really learn about your place, its inhabitants, its history, and its physicality.
Share. Look for others who are equally committed to this place and lean upon each other for knowledge and support. Then recruit others. Help people understand the richness of this place. Tell them what trees grew in their neighborhood before there were houses. Grow some of those native trees and plants in your front yard and tell those who walk by why you do it. Become an evangelist for the wellbeing of the local biota.
Give Back. The reason why I was at home fifty miles north of my house on Sweet Street was because of the hours, days, and years I had invested in the place where we were skiing. Larry and I actually built the trail we skied. It made us intimately familiar with the place and has created in me a deep longing to preserve it. I have become not just a random visitor in that forest, but an inhabitant and contributing part of the community.
That’s the call to action. If you want it, go get it. But please, don’t just get out to consume and stockpile achievements. Become a true inhabitant of the place. Learn how to be a good neighbor. Learn about those with whom we share the space, people, but plants and animals too, no matter how foreign they may seem to you today. Respect their right to be. Then be steady, faithful, and committed to the health and preservation of your community. And your home will grow.
