Stegner and Place

Today is the birthday of Wallace Stegner, writer, teacher and celebrator of place. The American West was his place and he described it well, its aridity and openness, the loneliness of its grain elevators and grasslands, the way it has shaped our character.

The New World transient is a person in motion, Stegner says. "Acquainted with many places, he is rooted in none." Because he moved frequently himself, Stegner knows "the dissatisfaction and hunger that result from placelessness." Which leads him to this conclusion:

"A place is not a place until people have been born in it, have grown up in it, lived in it, known it, died in it — have both experienced and shaped it, as individuals, families, neighborhoods and communities, over more than one generation."

I have thought about these words often since reading them this fall, have considered their truth as I try to feel at home in the suburbs. Thinking about them has led me to the library, to books about the people who lived here before us, to local historians who've discovered lost roads. I'm trying my best to feel at home here. But the "dissatisfaction and hunger" remain.