The Mystrey of Place

Kathryn Ericson

What is most important about visiting any location? Many people say it’s the people they know there and perhaps list them by name, or the organization and affiliations they belong to: People of like mind. Making contact with another individual or family might well be the most rewarding aspect of life. My parents were such people, who measured the richness and satisfaction of life in the people and society they had come to know in there lifetimes. Such relationships are fulfilling, grounding and provide the framework in our lifetimes. This is how society is created and made stable. It is a living structure based on cooperation. There is another way of perceiving connectedness through mystery of place and that is through keen observation and sense perception of the environments through which people move and the accidents and traces left behind. Rock formations and plant life hold great intelligence in their geometrics and apparently random placements. Over eons the winds, heat, cold and water etch a natural structure, commingled with humanity’s mark. What might superficially appear as random events are by laws of physics and principles of probability that are remarkable to appreciate. The placement of natural objects in the surroundings might well show a wisdom governed by the weight and mass of our planet, other forces long at work, and certainly the inroads made by humanity in our constant need to thrive, conquer, or simply survive. So, when asked what I enjoy most when traveling to a location, I am always inclined to say the landscape to say the landscape features that are present and all the space that people move through. People, living or extinct, are never separate from their environment, and their remaining traces finally reveal were, their dark sides. It is through the context of nature, time and human intervention that the theater for human life is created. I am interested in this natural theater for humanity. I am fascinated the mystery of place because I see in location the record of personal equations. The mystery of place will always stimulate curiosity, a primary trait of human being, and perhaps this trait will solve our current earth and humanitarian dilemmas, as we each take our turn in this earthly theater.