Where you at?

Where you at? It's a question with many meanings. We ask it when we want to know the location of someone. We ask it to find out how far along someone is in completing a task or project. And in the ancient hippie culture it was a question to discern one's psychic temperment. Those three meanings are more interconnected than we realize.

When I first began to notice birds, I thought of them as autonomous creatures whose habitations were simply unconnected matters of fact — as though the pictures of the birds in my bird book could somehow fly free of the pages themselves. But recognizing what you see means, first of all, taking account of where you see it. It becomes clear, sooner or later, that we live in a world of infinitely overlapping and abutting habitats — and that we are one of the rare creatures that are unbound, except in the broadest sense, by place and vocation. It takes an act of will on our part to remember how profoundly, and how beautifully, bound to habitat all the other creatures around us really are. - Verlyn Klinkenberg

It's not only birds that are intimately connected to their habitat. In many ways, where we are at not only shapes, but determines, where we are at. It's not hard to figure out where someone's formative years were lived: suburb or city, rural or exurban. It doesn't matter what "tribe" one associated with (jocks, nerds, etc.), location shapes our understanding of the world. There are also regional distinctions. Folks who came of age in the northeast view the world differently than those who were formed in the heartland, or the Left Coast. Yet, the urban/suburban/rural/exurban distinction is even more distinct.

I noticed the regional distinction in many ways, but it was very clearly expressed in a discussion I had with someone over the demolition of an old commercial strip center in one of our towns here in New England. For those raised in the area and who had never really lived anywhere else, this was just an unbelievable loss and waste. They couldn't fathom that this was actually the most cost effective and efficient use of the land. I described a corner in the Dallas area that has had at least three different buildings erected there in the last quarter century, and how each building was suited to the business conducted. And how the building was built, not to last forever, but knowing it would outlive its use and need to be repalced. The idea that a building wasn't permanent was incomprehensible to these Yankees. For my southwestern friends, however, the idea that you would leave standing a building that served no purpose, was of dubious historical or architechural value, and was in the way of utilizing valuable commercial space, just because you don't tear down "perfectly good" buildings, was something they couldn't understand.

How we relate to people and places is shaped even more by whether we grew up suburban, city or country. "Place" has a deeper meaning and connection to urban and country. For suburban, place is just a location, and habitat is more of a backdrop. For city, the physicality of the place is just as much THE substance of life as the vitality, the energy, the vibe of a place as the people and activities. We know this for country: white steeple churches on the town Green is New England. Miles and miles of waving wheat is Kansas. But what is suburb? Houses in locales that are neither country nor city. They are an illusion of both. And folks who came of age in suburbia are much more comfortable with illusion and image than urban or country. I know, that's a stereotype. But like all stereotypes, connected to an observable truism.

So, are you urban or country, suburban or exurban? Where are you at? And I don't mean where are you physically residing now.