How refreshing this blending of a human approach to nature (your approach to hunting, after all it's not all about filling the freezer) and a glimpse simultaneously into the darker side of human unconsciousness. Totalitarianism is most insidious as it hides as in our beloved once indigenous location. Be well!
Your reflections on nature interspersed with with reflections on your grandparents, and exile, made me think about the differences between land, place and home. I have always admired the connection you have with your land; how bound up it is in how you live, and how beautifully you write about it. But these descriptions are so remote from my experience, as someone who has always lived in or close to large cities on the Northeast seaboard (and spent hardly any time in the woods as an adult). I must confess feeling little or no connection with land, anywhere.
But what I do feel some connection with is place and home. Just ask any New Yorker - you won't hear anything about the land, or the rivers, or the sky. They love the skyline, the neighborhoods, the people, the noise, the culture, the chaos. Even the parks are loved as city spaces first and foremost. As for me, even if I never move back to New Haven, I'll always feel love for my dysfunctional but vital little city. Springsteen's "My Hometown" and all that. You have sometimes written of your time in Moscow, and your associations with certain places there. My very early years were in Washington D.C., and even today, if I were driving in on I-95 I know I would get that odd homesick feeling in my stomach as soon as I glimpsed the big Mormon temple right off the Beltway.
Maybe these are trivial examples and I'm splitting hairs. But it does lead me to wonder how much it matters what kind of land, and place, or neighborhood, you grew up in. Did I mention this book by Quill Kukla? It looks really neat - different from what you write about but for some reason it made me think of your blog:
Nov 4, 2022·edited Nov 4, 2022Liked by Antonia Malchik
This is such a beautiful read, I've enjoyed re-reading and thinking about it the past couple of days. I too have hunted and appreciate the immersion, the attention to the land, the surroundings, the animals, that deep knowledge that comes with it as a feeling more than anything articulate. I love that you wrote about that--and you also write so eloquently about how it relates to our sense of identity, our connections to land, to histories both foreign and local, familial and global. The nuance in all of it is what makes it both hard and filled with longing--that desire for connection to place, to allow place to mean something to us. I think about that so much having moved to Alaska a bit reluctantly and coming to find I love it but that it took twenty years--and part of that was having the ability to come to love it on terms I could recognize and find myself in, and I wonder about that too. As a settler I'm complicit in a history of colonization, and I still question what right or connection I have to call this place home. My settler ancestors lived in Oregon, but they were not Indigenous to that land, and I resent the rancher/settler multi-generation claims so many in Oregon and other places make to a place. But I also loved Oregon and felt a homesickness for it for years and still do. And yet there is conflict in that homesickness too. And I think that's right because it shouldn't be easy but I feel so strongly that we should know the history and natural history and culture of the places we live, that we should feel connection to the places we live in. We ignore place the same way we ignore the relationships we build outside of family. We allow society too often to tell us the rules of the game and we follow to our--and the land's--detriment. We need to pay attention. Really loved reading this.
This is such a great piece Nia that I feel like I could write an entire essay in response to it. I so admire your deep thinking and how you can coherently organize so many cogent thoughts. It is impressive.
This: "What does it mean to have freedom of mind, to not have your thinking and worldview shaped by propaganda?"
What saddens me is how deeply mired in this very thing a majority of Americans are without even realizing it. We have been duped into thinking it's only other countries who engage in this practice against their own people and yet here we are.
I'm also deeper into the mire of what the whole idea of what we consider "Indigenous" to be when I read about your connection to the landscape. Even AS an Indigenous person, the "connected to the land" bit is so much a part of the Native stereotype as anything else. There isn't some magic connectivity that happens to us just because we are Indians. If we don't exercise it, like anyone else, we become disconnected. It is a complex and frustrating issue.
Finally, that Mark Schoenfeld piece. I wish there was a bio attached to it, because there is a "Mark Schoenfeld" currently in the writing program at UM who I know is from Texas. I was paired to read with him a few weeks ago for their Second Wind series. He's a nice fellow, and I suspect it's the same person.
Thank you, as always, Nia. Regarding the perseverance of the Jewish people in the midst of continual forced disconnection from particular geographic areas, I'm reminded of what the rabbi at our local congregation told me years ago: "we had to switch from sacred space to sacred time, e.g. shabbat and the holidays"
Thanks again for always catalyzing wonderful conversation.
I am often thinking about thinking about thinking, as well as thinking about being. Thinking about being can be a battle. What I love most about this piece isn't the big ideas- how memory absorbs loss. How we defend or resist core beliefs- I love the chickadees. I always love the chickadees. I love the beauty in your writing, the humbleness without apology, and a curiosity that could be a creed.
When I read this I was struck IMMEDIATELY by how narrow a view of another people will be without "human intelligence". There seems no subsititute for the work of human interview to extract what life in a place is really like. In my early career, much of the business of the company I worked at was analytics of what life was like in other places in the world. The angle was national defense but I don't think that is important. There is always a classic misunderstanding. Do the people want to be free? Do they know what free even means? Is everyday life so difficult, they lack the luxury to even consider? Love your writing. Hope you are using non-lead rounds.
This is an outstanding post, and I will savory it over the next few days.
I think it should be republished in any number of periodicals: Backcountry Journal, Field and Stream, Outside, NYT and WaPo, Atlantic, Orion - need I go on.
I loved this and looking forward to rereading it and your recommendations.
How refreshing this blending of a human approach to nature (your approach to hunting, after all it's not all about filling the freezer) and a glimpse simultaneously into the darker side of human unconsciousness. Totalitarianism is most insidious as it hides as in our beloved once indigenous location. Be well!
Your reflections on nature interspersed with with reflections on your grandparents, and exile, made me think about the differences between land, place and home. I have always admired the connection you have with your land; how bound up it is in how you live, and how beautifully you write about it. But these descriptions are so remote from my experience, as someone who has always lived in or close to large cities on the Northeast seaboard (and spent hardly any time in the woods as an adult). I must confess feeling little or no connection with land, anywhere.
But what I do feel some connection with is place and home. Just ask any New Yorker - you won't hear anything about the land, or the rivers, or the sky. They love the skyline, the neighborhoods, the people, the noise, the culture, the chaos. Even the parks are loved as city spaces first and foremost. As for me, even if I never move back to New Haven, I'll always feel love for my dysfunctional but vital little city. Springsteen's "My Hometown" and all that. You have sometimes written of your time in Moscow, and your associations with certain places there. My very early years were in Washington D.C., and even today, if I were driving in on I-95 I know I would get that odd homesick feeling in my stomach as soon as I glimpsed the big Mormon temple right off the Beltway.
Maybe these are trivial examples and I'm splitting hairs. But it does lead me to wonder how much it matters what kind of land, and place, or neighborhood, you grew up in. Did I mention this book by Quill Kukla? It looks really neat - different from what you write about but for some reason it made me think of your blog:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/city-living-9780190855369
You may have already read this piece along with the New Yorker article, but just in case it escaped you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/us/mississippi-river-drought.html?unlocked_article_code=3Vr1Ksd4SBVvkOh1Z0mW1jGZcaEAPmDRy49PD87j-JpbH5t9Q51-Mef-Mo6rtIrerx1-JhVEPOrdeFJI-tn9tBe2Ml4a0M5eWtIL2bbGSOiNiqKIN9YN0ah9l8mTvyjuHCTa06wYjo9nmaqiaA-FGy-SejBpo_o2VjaRizZlh0c6xfyKPdMdFEpVaVZsbnIwSrzCm-UYhzSOUefITTJH3R9YUJGEh7OcFtQ5aLQeEsQSg2uIzgSXBOA_2yrI7aPcqQ20s2Qb466jGNXzYt6FilZN5OgjXvNh5ARhPjQ9Gr-RqAgMciQF4S5ER5Z-ngR7H9zunmstfMTmliXYJA&smid=share-url
This is such a beautiful read, I've enjoyed re-reading and thinking about it the past couple of days. I too have hunted and appreciate the immersion, the attention to the land, the surroundings, the animals, that deep knowledge that comes with it as a feeling more than anything articulate. I love that you wrote about that--and you also write so eloquently about how it relates to our sense of identity, our connections to land, to histories both foreign and local, familial and global. The nuance in all of it is what makes it both hard and filled with longing--that desire for connection to place, to allow place to mean something to us. I think about that so much having moved to Alaska a bit reluctantly and coming to find I love it but that it took twenty years--and part of that was having the ability to come to love it on terms I could recognize and find myself in, and I wonder about that too. As a settler I'm complicit in a history of colonization, and I still question what right or connection I have to call this place home. My settler ancestors lived in Oregon, but they were not Indigenous to that land, and I resent the rancher/settler multi-generation claims so many in Oregon and other places make to a place. But I also loved Oregon and felt a homesickness for it for years and still do. And yet there is conflict in that homesickness too. And I think that's right because it shouldn't be easy but I feel so strongly that we should know the history and natural history and culture of the places we live, that we should feel connection to the places we live in. We ignore place the same way we ignore the relationships we build outside of family. We allow society too often to tell us the rules of the game and we follow to our--and the land's--detriment. We need to pay attention. Really loved reading this.
This is such a great piece Nia that I feel like I could write an entire essay in response to it. I so admire your deep thinking and how you can coherently organize so many cogent thoughts. It is impressive.
This: "What does it mean to have freedom of mind, to not have your thinking and worldview shaped by propaganda?"
What saddens me is how deeply mired in this very thing a majority of Americans are without even realizing it. We have been duped into thinking it's only other countries who engage in this practice against their own people and yet here we are.
I'm also deeper into the mire of what the whole idea of what we consider "Indigenous" to be when I read about your connection to the landscape. Even AS an Indigenous person, the "connected to the land" bit is so much a part of the Native stereotype as anything else. There isn't some magic connectivity that happens to us just because we are Indians. If we don't exercise it, like anyone else, we become disconnected. It is a complex and frustrating issue.
Finally, that Mark Schoenfeld piece. I wish there was a bio attached to it, because there is a "Mark Schoenfeld" currently in the writing program at UM who I know is from Texas. I was paired to read with him a few weeks ago for their Second Wind series. He's a nice fellow, and I suspect it's the same person.
Thank you, as always, Nia. Regarding the perseverance of the Jewish people in the midst of continual forced disconnection from particular geographic areas, I'm reminded of what the rabbi at our local congregation told me years ago: "we had to switch from sacred space to sacred time, e.g. shabbat and the holidays"
Thanks again for always catalyzing wonderful conversation.
I am often thinking about thinking about thinking, as well as thinking about being. Thinking about being can be a battle. What I love most about this piece isn't the big ideas- how memory absorbs loss. How we defend or resist core beliefs- I love the chickadees. I always love the chickadees. I love the beauty in your writing, the humbleness without apology, and a curiosity that could be a creed.
Really beautiful piece.
When I read this I was struck IMMEDIATELY by how narrow a view of another people will be without "human intelligence". There seems no subsititute for the work of human interview to extract what life in a place is really like. In my early career, much of the business of the company I worked at was analytics of what life was like in other places in the world. The angle was national defense but I don't think that is important. There is always a classic misunderstanding. Do the people want to be free? Do they know what free even means? Is everyday life so difficult, they lack the luxury to even consider? Love your writing. Hope you are using non-lead rounds.
This is an outstanding post, and I will savory it over the next few days.
I think it should be republished in any number of periodicals: Backcountry Journal, Field and Stream, Outside, NYT and WaPo, Atlantic, Orion - need I go on.
I loved this and looking forward to rereading it and your recommendations.
You knocked it out of the park with this one.
Thank you