Dionne Brockman

English 680 – Ecocriticism

17 October 2000

Deborah Tall’s From Where We Stand – Recovering a Sense of Place

It is by knowing where you stand that you grow able to judge where you are. – Eudora Welty

The land surrounds us and embodies us, whether or not we wish to acknowledge it. Deborah Tall explores her own quest for a secure here throughout this book, touching on each step she made as she realized her own place on this earth.

Tall begins her exploration by looking at the differences between scenery and landscape, and recognizing that while scenery is only a backdrop for our hurried lives, we are, according to D. W. Meinig, “never in [landscape]” (9-10). Tall then explains her journey by bringing in Leslie Marmon Silko. Silko states that landscape is misleading as we use it. She says it implies that the “viewer stands outside or separate from the territory he or she surveys” (qtd 10). Rather, we actually reside in what is a landscape for others. We stand back and look out rather than down at our feet (10). Environment is not any better to describe the land, because it too surrounds us. But place has ‘a spirit,’ a “character envinced in the lives of its people” (10). A place is in the heart as well as on the map.

Land is much more important than just to be utilized for farming or breeding of animals. It also embodies the voices of ancestors and guides those who have remained loyal to that place (19). But along with the spiritual significance is the importance of the place’s name. Tall points out that “importing a name from one’s previous home provides a crucial sense of familiarity” (20). Thus, those who were forced for one reason or another to leave their home, are more easily adapted to the new one.

In chapter two, Tall exemplifies the beauty of Geneva, New York. It is here that she is attempting to adopt a here, a place to call her own. But Tall finds that rather difficult because “as places lose distinction, even the boundaries between them blur […] Larger towns run into a neighboring sprawl, so that a sign denoting a boundary seems arbitrary, pointless. Places are hemorrhaging” (55). She discusses at length the history of the finger lakes, Seneca Lake specifically, Geneva, Seneca, and all neighboring towns. She has a hard time pin-pointing a place to call hers because the vast expanse of winding dirt roads all seem to run together in her regionally neophytic mind. She is strong-willed, determined to find a place, “this place’s traditions are not my own, but I can perhaps attach myself to them. It will take an act of deliberate adoption, a willed transplant. Having a sense of place may by now require a continual act of imagination” (86).

Tall veers off her course, moving from trying to find a place to plant oneself, to the mobility that is so common now in today’s society. In chapter three, Dwelling, Tall realizes that dwelling usually means to pause or linger. But then she asks “how long do we have to stay somewhere to say we dwell there?” (89). When we live in one spot, one place for extended periods of time, we pick up the habits of that place. In fact, “to dwell in a place rather than simply exist in it seems to hinge on allowing adaptive habits to form, the act of accommodation” (89). We acclimate to our new place, and try to become a part of it. Otherwise, we don’t feel at home; we don’t feel comfortable.

Unfortunately, because a disconnection to place usually follows a considerable achievement, graduation, wedding, promotion, etc., “to stay in one place for life is usually interpreted as being unambitious, unadventurous – a negation of American values” (90). We are so conscientious of making something of ourselves, we frequently lose our sense of place in the process. But there is also the point of view that ‘roots are ruts’. To stay in one place isn’t the connection to the past, to our ancestors. It is to slowly rot in a lifeless cesspool of boredom (97).

But what of the other aspects of staying? In chapter four, Tall embraces her increasing tie to the Seneca, New York region. She discusses at length how she and her husband try to let both their lawn do its own will, and their garden prosper without being choked by the lawn. Tall then goes into an extensive discussion of the Native Americans and the successes they had with their gardens, utilizing the land without raping it, but then the white man came:

Peter Thomas explains that “In the minds of European Immigrants, their Old World agrarian pattern with its diverse crops and domestic animals was so superior to native American horticultural practices that propagandists and colonists alike used the issue to justify the dispossession of American native populations. (155)

Tall expresses her disdain at how the European American treated the Native Americans the same way we treated the earth; the decrease in quality and quantity of harvested food reflects the decrease of the Native American populations, and the extinction of many cultures that could have provided us with helpful hints if we had only given them a chance.

Chapter five doesn’t go into much detail about the land. It is comprised mostly of the lives that have made up a past and present for Geneva, especially Jemima Wilkinson and Walter Taylor. These two helped form Geneva with their firey passion for the land. Tall wants her readers to realize the importance of knowing the history of the land as well as the land itself.

Chapter six ties in with five in that Tall expresses the importance of legend and landscape. A quote at the beginning of the chapter says it best: “An unsung land is a dead land” – Bruce Chatwin of the Australian Aborigines. Oral tradition is a major component of Native American cultures, and can also be very useful in today’s societies. Tall pleads with her readers to listen to the legends, and “trust in the stories behind the names” (198). Tall continues by expounding some of the tales known among local Genessee and explaining how place names, while mostly renamed by Europeans, would actually be better off staying with the original names given by the Native Americans.

The chapter ends with Apache sayings that best demonstrate how names and legends can direct the traveler. Tall gives us examples:

The place-names used by the Apache for […] stories, or ‘land names’ literally, are precise guides to their locations – ‘Trail extends across a long red ridge with alder trees,’ ‘Cluster of big walnut trees stands bushing out.’ In contrast, says the Apache, ‘The Whiteman’s names are no good. They don’t give pictures to your mind.’ ‘Apaches don’t need Polaroids. We’ve got good names!’ (201)

The connection you feel to any particular spot on earth is the place where you feel the most connected, the most secure, the most comfortable. The names you carry with you also connect you to the legends of that place, the history, and your own past.

Tall, Deborah. From Where We Stand – Recovering A Sense of Place.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.