As with most Americans I have moved several times in my life—from Oklahoma, where I was raised and went to college to San Francisco where I lived for three decades. I left San Francisco in 2005, having grown weary of the congestion of the Bay Area and the challenge of living in a city fraught with balkanized politics, rampant homelessness, and growing economic inequality. After a decade in Oregon, I now live in Arizona where I moved four years ago.
A couple of years after I moved away from San Francisco, I came to realize that it had been my home, and that having left it, I felt homeless. I grieved for what I had given up. By homeless, I don’t mean that I lacked a place to live, for by that time I had bought a house and had a job that made me well-connected in the town in which I was living. Rather, I mean that my relationship with the new place was superficial because I knew so little about it. I was familiar in general with its neighborhoods, major employers, and many of its businesses. I knew a bit about its political structure and was acquainted with several of its leaders. But that knowledge lacked the depth, perspective, and context that can be acquired only over time. Despite being a resident who owned property and who had many acquaintances, I realized that in important respects I was no more than a long-term visitor. Although I was living in that place, I was not of it.
To be of a place implies being there long enough to know its history; to know the details of how it came into being; to gain a sense the trajectory of its changes—economic, demographic, cultural; to know about its leaders past and present—those who have power and why; to know what fuels its economy; to appreciate its class distinctions; and to know its secrets, its treasures, its tragedies. It also means understanding how it fits into its region—where its water comes from and where it goes after being used, the vagaries of its climate, its flora and fauna, its vulnerabilities to the caprices of nature. It means accepting its flaws but not denying them or being blind to them. It means having a sense of that place as a community. Above all, it means to be willing to be part of it for the long haul. It means to become native to the place.
Living in San Francisco for so many years and raising my daughters there, I came to understand much about the city, its history, and its setting. I came to consider myself of San Francisco even though I was born and raised in Oklahoma and carry that regional accent with me. In many ways I had become a native.
I have taken the concept of becoming native to a place from the title of a fine collection of essays by Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place. I first learned about him and his work nearly thirty years ago through the writing of Wendell Berry. One of the principal themes of Berry’s life work is the importance of community, a concept that informs Jackson’s thinking. Wallace Stegner quoted Berry as saying that if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are. That idea resonates with me. One of the symptoms of the homelessness I felt after having left San Francisco was a sense of feeling lost, of drifting, of not knowing who I was since I was no longer a San Franciscan.
I am not the only one who suffers from a sense of homelessness. It is epidemic. We are a transient society where moving from one place to another is common—for work, school, love, escape from a stifling life, and so on. The result is that although we might live in a place many of us are not of it. We lack knowledge of not only where we are but, as Wendell Berry observes, who we are. The consequences of this lack are evident in in our cities and towns which are becoming indistinguishable from their counterparts across the nation—where civic spirit and involvement have given way to apathy about local politics; where chains, malls, and big box stores have killed local businesses and left main streets blighted with boarded-up buildings; where local cultures and traditions are eroding in the face of homogenized entertainment offered up at the multiplex cinema.
I no longer grieve for San Francisco nor regret leaving. Although I miss the city, the San Francisco that I miss disappeared long ago and lives only in my memory. I have little desire to even visit the place it has become.
In contrast, I greatly enjoy living in southern Arizona, an hour from Mexico. As I learn more about the area—its history, the rich mix of cultures of the Borderlands, the Sonoran Desert and its inhabitants—I feel more and more that I am home. Living in Baja Arizona for four years, I am learning about the area and regaining a sense of place. I realize, however, that I will not live long enough to become suffused with the knowledge necessary to become native to this place. In a sense, I will be homeless for the rest of my life.