Sometimes there’s a way to find a different place, even in the middle of a sea of sameness. This grass-roofed open hut sits on a hillside in Wales, hidden on the backside of a very clean-shaven gray and beige housing development.
There’s a small path at the back of the housing development, and it isn’t well traveled. People walk right past it, as it’s just about hidden at the entrance, but it opens up into a road of sorts, once you’re down inside.
And once you’re down the hillside, you’re in a different world. Small camper-sized trailers are set among thick, overgrown woods. A strange mix of lush wet wood scent and propane from the tanks outside the camper homes come together and separate and permeate the air. 
My husband and I took a walk down this hillside last summer. We walked a kind of hide-n-seek hike down the hill, as we were seeking to see people, and they seemed to be seeking just the opposite. Finally, about halfway down, we met a woman sporting high Army-green Wellington-style plastic boots, and two long white chin hairs tucked into her dark blue turtleneck. She eyed us up and walked us on down and out of there, down the rest of the path, which we’d lost in the thick brush, down to a place where the green opened wide and offered up a gorgeous full frontal view of the Bristol Channel.
She walked on with us a little farther, and I swear it felt like we were being ushered away; that if she could've shut a conjured door and locked it behind her to keep us out afterward, she would have.
As we came closer to the sea, we saw the hut. She told us, just before she turned around and left us there, that the hillside people had built it for a gathering place.
I’ve stumbled upon enough separated places like this in my life, often hidden in plain sight, behind a wall of trees, inside a pub, inside a building somewhere, that my view of what constitutes reality is very fluid. It affects my worldview, and it enters my writing, as this place did.
How about you? What kinds of places have entered your writing? What kinds of places tug at you?
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sense of Place
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17 comments:
The places that tug at me are remote and quiet, lush green and often with water nearby. Mossy woods are wonderful. I think of places like this as being sacred - almost other-worldly. In a different mood I'll choose the sea on a windy day. I like the roughness of the water, its energy, its lack of mercy - but more than that I adore the feeling a gale blowing through my hair. Atlantic gales are the best.
I love these sorts of places — where pet goats can mingle with rusting old cars and mould-people who didn't so much grow up in the vicinity but sprouted from its muck.
Sadly, my writing is almost exclusively dominated by kitchens and toilets at the moment.
Hi Janey,
I think I underatnd what you mean. You guys have so many wonder-ful places there - like the forests where the floors are carpeted in lush large ferns. And the cliff paths - they just take my breath away, rain or shine.
Hi WO,
Yep- we tried to find people to talk to - only found the chin hair lady. All of these tiny houses were tucked into the steep hillside, and all around them it was thick with green forest. Very cool. The kind of place where you expect something different to happen.
Toilets and kitchens, huh?
I just want to say that I love the grass roofed home, though I feel like, if I lived there, I might get periodically visited by Gandalf and a bunch of dwarves.
I see what you mean, Pacatrue. Although I think it would be really cool to get a visit by Gandalf and friends.
Yeah- Britain does have some good Gandalf places.
That's one of my favorite things about Britain. It's 'ruly' and proper on the outside- Gadalfy and madly eccentric on many insides.
Yes! I really, really want to visit Britain.
I'm a bit jealous of janeyv. Best gale I get is from Lake Michigan.
Although in a couple of years I may be feeling the gale of the Pacific.
Hmm, places that tug at me. Old brick homes. I die a little inside every time I see one get demolished and replaced by a massive modern mansion. (This is happening frequently in Utah, sadly.) They have so much character and they are disappearing.
Mountains covered in snow on top and green on the bottom, or burning red and yellow in Autumn. I live by some gorgeous mountains. And if you haven't seen the Grand Tetons, you need to.
Anywhere very green. Upstate New York comes to mind. And Lake Tahoe in California.
Oh and a fireplace in the dead of winter, preferably with a cup of hot chocolate, a blanket, and a book.
I grew up in rural England, lived in some of those beige housing estates on the edge of green fields and loved it. We knew all the little green lanes, the long-dismantled railway track, the brook running through the wood; a copse in the middle of a wheat field that hid an old stone well. Man, I was lucky.
I live in a huge city now. The nighttime sky is orange, and there's no such thing as silence anymore. Now the countryside is a treat rather than a way of life.
My green, fresh-aired past tugs constantly...
You go, freddie. Pacific gales sound like they're right up your "water alley". You need 'em, girl. You need 'em.
Natalie,
I love the places you mention. Especially, though, the fireplace and the book reading. Wonderful.
ril my darlin',
You sound homesick. Any chance you and yours could move to Britain while your little one is still little? Maybe it's your turn not to live, as they say, "overseas".
I realize this isn't any of my business. I just remember having this kind of conversation with my husband when we'd decided to marry - where we would go - whihc side of the Atlantic. We chose this one (actually, he did) but now...we're thinking again.
I second Natalie's fire with a book. Heaven.
Robin, I'm not far behind. A friend and I were joking about moving to Europe today. (I want to visit Amsterdam. It just so happens I love, er, coffee shops. Yeah, that's it.) We settled on Spain, though.
I crave the mountains. I grew up in the same city as Natalie, at the foot of Mount Timpanogoes. Real mountains--none of those sissy rolling hills they have in the East ; )
You could drive up through the canyon that was three minutes away, find some spot to turn off, and wander under the aspens like you were the only soul in the world. I used to pretend I was in one of the cheesy fantasy novels I loved, and imagine beautiful ways to describe how the fallen leaves carpeted the ground.
Living on top of and underneath and next to masses of humanity in this wretched apartment complex leaves me feeling smothered. There's nowhere here for miles and miles you can go to get that sense of solitude, and I miss it and any place that conveys it.
But mostly, after seeing that picture, I want to go there. Or back to Alaska.
Also, hi! Taking a break from my insane obsession. I've been missing you.
Hi freddie,
Yeah. I've been to Amsterdam - I didn't check out the coffee shops when I was there....but I here that it's just fine. Still tastes good- even though it's legal.
Hey Kiersten,
I miss you too - but I know the writing needs to come first.
It does for me, too - and I've really got to focus on it even more than I already do. So don't worry. I understand!
Good luck on your writing, ladies!
I am truly, truly blessed in that the land I live on now is what calls to me. There are no spectacular mountains nearby, but the temperature suits me better than mountain or desert climes. No mossy greenswards or seacoast gales, but the occasional tornado does come winding by.
It's 19 acres that has plenty of diversity. Towering, brushy red cedars with a few old oaks and pecans and bois d'arc trees ring and dot much of the land. Two larger ponds, one willow-lined and nestled near a creek with a small dock that's perfect for feeding the catfish from. The other pond dug from a treeless pasture just two years ago where sedge and reeds from who-knows-where have just begun growing up around the edge. And a smaller koi pond, rock lined, with a waterfall that soothes you almost to sleep when sitting on the swing of the wrap-around, veranda-style porch. A house that sits off the road by a quarter of a mile, with a row of trees roadside to muffle the sound of the occasional pickup guttering by.
Neither land nor home could ever hope to grace the cover of a magazine, and I'm sure there are far grander settings that could surely enthrall me, but it's here that tugs and here that I belong. And, strangely, it's here that never finds it way into what stories I write. Perhaps I'm just too protective of it to share.
Hi phoenix,
Sounds wonderful to me - and maybe you are protecting it - and I think that's beautiful. It's part of your private space.
What's wrong with protecting that? Nothin'!
What a very cool walk you took. Thanks for sharing it.
My wife is drawn to the sea shore and the dry California hills, places like Mendocino and Napa. I am drawn to dramatic mountains, places like Tahoe and Yosemite and New Hampshire and Seattle.
I can't think of many hidden delights like you discover--I tend to stay to the beaten path--but I love the romance of them.
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