from MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL: APRIL 2, 1999

If one explores the idea

of place, what characteristics should be examined. Certainly topography - the lay of the land, whether it is wild and woolly as Wyoming, mountainous like Montana, flat like Kansas or Indiana, or sweeping and whooping like Wisconsin. How does the land lay?

One would examine, also, climate and weather - rainfall and indigenous flora related to climate; the kinds of storms that sweep through - Florida hurricanes v. Kansas tornados v. South Dakota blizzards. These shape one's experience of a place, and some of them reshape the place itself. Climate might relate, too, to lakes, streams, etc.

You'd need to look at wild life in a place to understand the place, wouldn't you? The buffalo on the Great Plains - ecologically the buffalo was suited to that environment, that environment was suited to the buffalo.

You cannot take a look at place without looking at the people of the place, and their habits. Are they farmers, are they ranchers, are they given to building cities and manufacturing enterprises? Do they produce smog?

You cannot understand a place unless you understand its relationship to other places. How far must supplies come? Is it on the railroad line, along the Interstate, at the ocean's edge? Do we grow our own food or haul it in? How far does fuel come? What level of contact do the people of a particular place have with outsiders, with strangers. Do visitors get the beady eye or a warm welcome; and why one rather than the other?

The pattern of the history of settlement is one more thing to consider. The perception of the place by potential immigrants shapes settlement and the pattern of settlement shapes the place.

What other characteristics? One should study all of this - it's important, it relates to the day-to-day reality of a place.

The birds are singing and singing. What do they care about the idea of place? What they do care about to some extent defines place, doesn't it?

It is a low, grey sky. The thin layers of cloud bump the ground. You can see the blue sky through the haze - the sun is not entirely dimmed.

There are seagulls above the fields this morning. If they care about anything, they don't show it.

Where is crow this morning?