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Have you travelled much outside that area? how have you felt then?
though i don’t know those feelings (though i seriously don’t think i mix with florida – i need some hills!), they don’t sound unreasonable. perhaps a different place would be better, even if only temporarily. it could help provide some perspective on the dilemma.
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Singanothertime, your post makes me really curious about the rest of the story of your relationship to the land where you live. How long have you lived there, what kind of experiences have you had there, what do you compare it to, where does your family live. . . ?
I’ve felt something that maybe approaches what you describe. I come from 2 generations of rootlessness–folks who move around constantly, building relationships with land and people and then discarding them and moving on for reasons more related to the myths and priorites of the taker culture than any deeper personal meaning or motivation.
The place where my folks live right now, on the prairie of Colorado near the foothills of the Rockies, feels absolutely inhospitable to me, almost like the deep ocean or outer space. I lived there briefly, then made the decision to move elsewhere for many reasons. A big part of that move away from family stemmed from my negative feelings about that place (the “rootlessness” issue, food for a whole nother thread, made it easier, too). The wind blows unrelentingly, the everpresent sun never gives your eyes a rest, the dry raspy air seems desperate for water and pulls away any moisture your body might try to hold. The extremes of nearly treeless prairie and dry, rocky mountains hold beauty for the eye but no comfort for my heart.
I didn’t feel that the land hated me, just that nothing drew us to each other. I didn’t feel welcomed and provided for by that land, I felt she didn’t offer what I sought. Maybe I didn’t offer what she sought.
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no worries! i tend to think that part of re-wilding is struggling through the traumas of civilization. i think re-wilding could just as easily be called “healing” – healing the land, each other, and ourselves.
(as a clarifying note: i don’t live in florida, i was just relating my experiences from the times that i’ve visited florida.)