The Landscape of Home

I went with the Photographer to South Dakota. The landscape where he grew up, on the east side of the Missouri River, is phenomenally flat. This was the view on a Sunday evening as we headed for his parents’ house. He was tired, so he turned the driving over to me. “See that road?” he said. “Just follow it.” The directions were that simple. It was possible to see miles and miles ahead, as there was nothing in the landscape to impede the view.

As we drove, the Photographer told me of the sense of relief he felt at being back on the land where he grew up. Where we live now the surroundings are greener, hillier and more forested. Sometimes he feels a bit claustrophobic. The city I grew up in is in a valley, surrounded by hills and full of trees. It’s impossible to see too far in any one direction. So while the Photographer felt a sense of elation, I felt a little vulnerable on the wide prairie with no cover around for miles. 

I am amazed at the depth of our relationship to this Earth we come from, how geography, weather, and celestial events move and change us.

Mountain

In his book on the King archetype in the masculine psyche, Robert Moore writes that mountains are masculine structures, their ascent towards the sky being form arising from formlessness, solid land from primordial ocean, structured thought moving towards the light of illumination. Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that I climb to high places when I need to find some clarity. I had thought it was the sacrifice of getting there, the loud everydayness of the mind quieted by the effort of climbing, and no doubt, it is that too. But just today I have another picture of that action, a way of bringing two halves of myself together, the masculine mountain and the self that knows it needs to climb feminine, intuitive. I picture the walking from the bottom to the top, an act of structuring, a labor of bringing something from the depths closer to the light.

The Passenger Seat

I had a dream that a friend of mine was driving down a crowded highway near where I live. Right next to us a car had broken down and was being towed away. My friend almost ran into it. In fact, I soon found out she was not the best driver. There were a number of near misses, which made me grip the seat in terror but seemed to disturb her only slightly. As we drove on, things got rough. Cars were darting in and out all around us, there was a wreck just off to the side, and in front of us, another car actually blew up. My friend turned around to face me, as I was sitting in the back seat. She said calmly, I’m sorry about all this. I’m normally a much better driver… really.