Emily Cole: Landscapes of the Sacred Introduction

In Belden C. Lane's Landscapes of the Sacred, the reader is urged to participate as a means of 'human understanding' (p. 4) of the wilderness, whether it be culturally, religiously, or ecologically. Lane cites cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan's theory of topophilia ('the attachment we often feel for particular places' (p. 6)), which I believe everyone has experienced at one point in their lives. For example, I consider only one place to be my true home, and one for which I feel this attachment Tuan wrote about in his 1974 work, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. This place is a bungalow in a small beach community, set right on the bay front of Jamaica Bay in Queens, New York. From my porch one can see the New York City skyline, Empire State Building and all, and even the historic Coney Island to the left horizon. But what makes this house so special is its history- over 80 years of family memories have been made, and three generations have grown up there. Gabriel Marcel states that "an individual is not distinct from his place; he is that place," (p. 6) and nothing applies more perfectly to this house. I've moved around eight times, and I've never lived in the same place twice; this is why my beach house means so much to me, its the once place to which I have returned summer after summer, and until finally settling down in my home in Northern Virginia, it was the only place I knew for sure I would return to, and that is a comforting thought growing up. Returning to a certain place is about comfort, after all. Lane explains how its a very common recurring theme in dreams, "the seat that cannot be found- the anxiety that one feels in seeking his or her appropriate place at a meeting, on a plane, at a formal banquet," (p. 7). How true, that we all worry about where to sit in everyday aspects of our lives; in addition to Lane's examples, I think of finding a seat in class, and then worrying still in every subsequent class unless there is an assignment for where to sit. Also, as a little girl I remember arguing with my sisters about getting the same seats in our mom's van, as if this would determine so much in regards to an upcoming errand or car trip. Now, being almost 20 years old, I translate that into calling "shotgun!" every time I'm a passenger in someone else's car- its all about knowing where you will be and being comfortable about that knowledge.

"Our destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things," Henry Miller once stated (p. 12), and how right he was in regards to intangible places, ones where we cannot physically go. When someone is in a place of depression or sadness, for example, it doesn't mean they've literally gone somewhere else; it means that their outlook on life is simply from a different viewpoint, and they might be looking at things in a negative way. This destination, however, deserves a more positive connotation, and I believe that Miller meant for one to take events in life as they are, then take a second look, and arrive at a place completely different.