I received The Pine Island Paradox this spring as a birthday gift from my sweet friend Hana, who also connected with Moore's work. While on a spring break backpacking trip in the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park, I first read "What It Means to Love a Place" aloud to my adventure buddies, Sebastian and Sam. We were nestled in our tent, a hundred miles from civilization, smelling of sweat and salami and covered in a thick layer of fine orange desert dust. My headlamp flickered and the wind snapped at our tent. Despite the novelty of the desert solitude, I was completely at home in the comfort of the tent, surrounded by two of my closest friends.
This summer, as I've walked and kayaked along the coastlines of Kodiak, as I've made new friends and reconnected with those from years ago, and as I've missed my family who now lives in Abu Dhabi, Moore's essay has come to mind many times. I've tussled with the paradox of loving Kodiak while the people that make the place so special to me live halfway across the globe. While my love for Kodiak has always been rooted in the natural beauty of the place -- the green moss that drapes lazily on spruce trees, the barnacles and sea stars that decorate the intertidal zones, the song birds that erupt from the alders when I hike past -- my family's presence in Kodiak plays a significant role in what makes me love it here. Since they've moved, my definition of "family" has expanded to include friends, friends' parents, and other people's dogs. I admire Moore's ability to communicate her understanding of love for both people and places, and I've attached my favorite portions from the essay. Read more at Kathleen Dean Moore's website.
Love has as its object: daughter, son, young woman who loves son, sudden quiet, a certain combination of smells (hemlock, salt water), mist swimming with light, purple kayak, fog-bound island, hidden cove, and the man who can drive a boat through any squall. The list is, of course, incomplete. Add silver salmon. Add unexpected sun.
I stretch my back and start two lists. What does it mean to love a person? What does it mean to love a place? Before long, I discover I've made two copies of the same list. To love – a person and a place – means at least this:
Number One: To want to be near it, physically.
Number Two: To want to know everything about it – its story, its moods, what it looks like by moonlight.
Number Three: To rejoice in the fact of it.
Number Four: To fear its loss, and grieve for its injuries.
Number Five: To protect it – fiercely, mindlessly, futilely, and maybe tragically, but to be helpless to do otherwise.
Six: To be transformed in its presence – lifted, lighter on your feet, transparent, open to everything beautiful and new.
Seven: To want to be joined with it, taken in by it, lost in it.
Number Eight: To want the best for it.
Number Nine: Desperately.
I know there's something important missing from my list, but I'm struggling to put it into words. Loving isn't just a state of being, it's a way of acting in the world. Love isn't a sort of bliss, it's a kind of work. To love a person is to act lovingly toward him, to make his needs my own. To love a place is to care for it, to keep it healthy, to attend to its needs. Obligation grows from love. It is the natural shape of caring.
Number ten, I write in my notebook: To love a person or a place is to take responsibility for its well-being. I turn the rowboat toward camp, tugging on the clanking oars, scattering reflections, picturing my family gathering one by one to explore the bay as the tide falls. They will be stumbling over rocks and calling out to one another. "Look, here, under the kelp."
Adapted from Kathleen Dean Moore, The Pine Island Paradox (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2004), 34-36. Copyright © 2004, Kathleen Dean Moore
I stretch my back and start two lists. What does it mean to love a person? What does it mean to love a place? Before long, I discover I've made two copies of the same list. To love – a person and a place – means at least this:
Number One: To want to be near it, physically.
Number Two: To want to know everything about it – its story, its moods, what it looks like by moonlight.
Number Three: To rejoice in the fact of it.
Number Four: To fear its loss, and grieve for its injuries.
Number Five: To protect it – fiercely, mindlessly, futilely, and maybe tragically, but to be helpless to do otherwise.
Six: To be transformed in its presence – lifted, lighter on your feet, transparent, open to everything beautiful and new.
Seven: To want to be joined with it, taken in by it, lost in it.
Number Eight: To want the best for it.
Number Nine: Desperately.
I know there's something important missing from my list, but I'm struggling to put it into words. Loving isn't just a state of being, it's a way of acting in the world. Love isn't a sort of bliss, it's a kind of work. To love a person is to act lovingly toward him, to make his needs my own. To love a place is to care for it, to keep it healthy, to attend to its needs. Obligation grows from love. It is the natural shape of caring.
Number ten, I write in my notebook: To love a person or a place is to take responsibility for its well-being. I turn the rowboat toward camp, tugging on the clanking oars, scattering reflections, picturing my family gathering one by one to explore the bay as the tide falls. They will be stumbling over rocks and calling out to one another. "Look, here, under the kelp."
Adapted from Kathleen Dean Moore, The Pine Island Paradox (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2004), 34-36. Copyright © 2004, Kathleen Dean Moore
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