To glean the essence of a place, to define it by music, word, or image is not a task taken lightly.  I am indebted to those who have done it well, composer Maria Schneider, “The Thompson Fields”, and poet Ted Kooser, “Winter Morning Walks”, for inspiration in this undertaking.

These images speak to my interpretation of this “Home Place”.

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Home Place:  The part of a piece of land on which a home is built.  Simple, deceptively so, saying  much and carrying so much emotion.  This home that is built is our character, our understanding, our sense of place and history, indeed our very self.

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Rustic Road, Menomonie

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The land upon which this home is built becomes the internal landscape of our life, always operating, always seeking reconciliation with the external landscape of our future.  To be left, yes, but always drawing us back as inexorably as gravity.  Comforting like a native language re-joined, like a familiar room re-entered, an old cloak placed over the shoulders.  Romanticized of course, but such is the license of Art.

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What lands are these then, carved by glacier, shaped by wind, water, and man, seemingly constant through our short time, seen through the eyes of childhood with imagination and wonder, sinking deep into our consciousness.  These rivers, this soil, the fields, hills, woodlots, lakes, the prairie and sky, the colors of seasons, the planting and harvest.  The silence of a snowstorm, flakes swirling in the lamplight, May Baskets excitedly placed on door steps the first warm day of spring, wondrous fantasy clouds traversing the summer blue sky like ships at sea, golden leaves falling with a soft rustle like quiet voices, fragrance of Fall surrounding me.  All this and more to be the land on which the home is built.

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Olmsted County

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Highway F, Bloomer

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Rustic Road, Menomonie

Artistry, the swirling contours of this field so appropriate for the landscape.  Was this done with art in mind or utilitarian?  Did the creator of this lovely image sit back and sigh?

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Fields, fallow and full, harvested and gleaned, tilled and raw stretch on acre by acre, over contour and boundary to woodland and sky.  Working soil, providing sustenance to human, livestock, and wildlife.  Abused at times, yes, hopefully with more insight today.

“When we see land as a community to which we belong we may begin to use it with love and respect”         Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac

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Crossroads, Chippewa County

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Peaceful Valley Farm, Rustic Road, Menomonie

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To those who first inhabited this land, Oneota, Sauk, Fox, Menominee, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, and to those who came later, German, Swede, Norwegian, French, this was a land of plenty, a land of new life, a land of hope.  The builders of this barn “Peaceful Valley Farm”  evidently felt that way, though marred by years and elements, it retains character, a statement of it’s time.  These voices then are also part of the land upon which the home is built. Their language we may not recognize, their memory we may not hold beyond a few generations, but they are part of us.

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RIVERS

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Sunset, Eau Claire River

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And the rivers, so many beautiful rivers, formed by melting glacier, fed by eons of snowmelt and rain, raucous with ice when the breakup comes in spring.  They course through the countryside, their names a recitation of history:  Eau Claire, Chippewa, Red Cedar, Flambeau, Mississippi.

Trappers, traders, pioneers;  lumberjacks riding huge log rafts downriver when the great forests were cut, a passage through the wilderness for parcels and persons. A landscape of scenic beauty.

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Big Falls, Eau Claire River

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Sunrise, Dave’s Dock, Eau Claire River

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Sometimes these river voices are heard again calling to one another, calling to shore, in joy or distress.  Usually early morning as the mist and fog lift and the boundary between water and air, solid and vapor, is blurred.

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Dawn, Chippewa River near Lufkin

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SEEDS OF HOPE

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I kept wondering what that meant, Seeds of Hope.  I saw it often traveling Highway 37 along the river.  Associated with sunflower fields, signs up on fence post, only later did I know it was in memory of a beloved woman taken by illness.  There are a lot of seeds of hope here, not only sunflowers, but seen in the love of people for one another, the beauty of the land, the rising consciousness of our relationship with the natural world.  Seeds of Hope.

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Dawn, Highway 37, near Caryville, 28 degrees.

I love this photograph.  It is the closest to what I had hoped to achieve, the panorama of field and farm and sky in the early morning light and shadow, a coating of frost on the drooping sunflower heads, a family farm, corn field in the distance and finally a thick layer of fog lying over the river.  Breathtaking.  I am so grateful to have found it.

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Tilled Earth with Frost, Highway 37

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Frosted Sunflowers, the Seeds of Hope.

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NATIVE PRAIRIE

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Can you imagine what it was like, head high grass, shrub, and herb as far as the eye could see, Buffalo in numbers now unfathomable.  It must have taken their breath away.  Too soon it was gone in the relentless quest for tillable land and range.  Pockets remain, restoration is in progress, all is not lost, but we won’t see it again in its glory.  I walked through Native Prairie in Minnesota, sparkling yellow in the sunshine, waving in light wind, and truly above my head.

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Fontenac State Park on the Mississippi

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LAKES AND PONDS

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A product of glaciers, excavated then filled with melt water;   Kettle Lakes, Tarn, Paternoster , Glacial Lakes, scattered in the moraine of the receding glacier like diamonds in sand.  Here since Ice Age, deep, clear, cold;  the ice may go out but the cold never really leaves, lurking near by to re-claim it’s hold.

Oh, yes, hold that coat open and let the wind blow you across the lake ice on skates on the coldest day of the year, watch as the men saw the lake and convey the ice blocks into the sawdust filled ice house to provide coolness in the months to come, take the first plunge in spring on a dare, linger long upon the warm days of summer.  Lakes are the jewels in the crown of this landscape.

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Shattuck Lake, Chippewa Moraine Ice Age Center

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Blue Diamond

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Larrabee Lake, Highway 40

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Cottage road, Long Lake

My brother and I walked this road, talking and looking, as so many of my family have done before.  It holds many memories.  Memories that are also part of the home that is built upon the land, how could it be otherwise.

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Many miles and many days later we often come to the conclusion that the best is in our own backyard.  So it was for me nearing the end of my time here in this place.  The closest, the most familiar, the overlooked, held secrets of beauty to be revealed.

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Bullhead Pond

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Bullhead Pond, Sunset Reflection

Home Place, the reflection we see gazing into the pond of memory.

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