Punctuated Migration

I wrote an essay/meditation/scholarly piece a few years back about punctuated migration, the contemporary practice of moving every few years (once a decade, maybe) that might well start in childhood. This situation sets those of us interested in place-based writing into a strange situation: if we’re not a dirt elite (been on one piece of land for generations), then how can we write while holding any kind of claim to the place? My argument boils down to respect and openness, a listening curiosity.

In the piece, I argue that we take our places with us, but we—that is, anyone interested in the pattern of punctuated migration while maintaining place-based interests—must avoid letting those places from our past overwhelm the present. We need to let the new places speak clearly. That attitude is especially important in my role (now, not so new) as an editor, and there’s something about this place, Alaska, that has a lot to listen to.

I count myself lucky, of course, that so much of that conversation comes into my office. It’s a unique experience, I think, for a cheechako moving up to learn so much about the place so quickly. And from so many different directions: poetry, snow science, history, geography… The list goes on.

The next step, though, is connecting back. What did those other places, those other landscapes, people, and his history give to me that I can take into this place? I’m beginning to develop some answers. I’ve been thinking a lot about agriculture and Alaska, and about the complicated sense of being overlooked while also being criticized. So I’ve imported some of the Midwest and Appalachia, but I’m always looking for how Alaska diverges from where I’ve been, trying to hear the place on its own.

Here’s the difficult part of the listening: Alaska is simply too large to contain. As someone in the Interior, I don’t have access to the ocean. Or the oil fields to the north. We get far less snow than the Gulf, and we’re not even close to the amount of rainfall the rain forests get. In short, still a lot of listening to be done.