HOME FROM HOME
I just got home from home. I know, that does sound odd, but it is what is (odd again).
I’ve lived in the same town for over 40 years and in the same house for over 30 years, but I’m not from here. I’m from the Black Hills of South Dakota and I always will be. I just returned from a wonderful trip there.
When someone asks, "Where are you from?" I have always found it hard to describe myself as from here. So I go home to where I’m from and come back to where I live. But now, after all these years, when we leave South Dakota I can finally say and feel like I’m on my way home.
My husband and children were born and raised here. They live among the familiar images and locations that shaped them. However, my children have spent such good times with family in the summers and winters in South Dakota that they feel a little like they are from there as well.
For me it takes being back on those streets to conjure and revive the images and often the emotions. It feels so familiar and so affirming. And coming from a place that has in many ways stayed the same insures that comfort.
A photographer friend, Amanda Boe, provided a quote from Wallace Stegner for one of her shows. “Expose a child to a particular environment at his susceptible time and he will perceive in shapes of that environment until he dies.”
For me it is more than perception of shapes, I am drawn back to that environment and will be until I die.