The Power of Place

I ponder the part that place plays in our spiritual development. Does growing up in the woods change who you are and become compared with that same being who is raised in the urban world of a metropolis? Was the role of Loyola as place vital to who Ignatius of Loyola became? Did the rolling hills and mountains that he walked as a boy form him into the man that would become awestruck at the night sky.

I am an avid reader and would agree that there are some books and writers that are so drawn to the power of place that the setting becomes another main character in the story. It is in the interaction between the persons and place that the plot draws its drama. Where the Crawdad Sings or Go Like a River would be sadly lacking in structure and form without the beauty and grandeur of the settings.

I grew up in rural Iowa and there was nothing I liked better than being down in the greenbelt behind our house which we all lovingly called "the ditch." I had no affinity to the life of Iowa, of the town, or even the houses we lived in. When I turned 18 and was ready for college, I was more than ready to leave it behind and the same was true four years later as I left Florida for California. But the Iowa trees and grasses and mud that formed that young girl somehow nurtured her into the woman that would want nothing more than a walk in the woods on a spring day in the Santa Cruz hills.