Beginngs III?

My formative and most memorable experiences with places stem from childhood exploration and adventure. I grew up on the north end of Fargo, North Dakota, (the 2011 worst weather city in the United States according to a weather.com competition) a portion of the city that full of small town character and seemingly immune to rapid economic development. Like many children growing up in a middle class residential neighborhood, I spent a majority of my waking hours exploring my home and neighborhood, inside and out. I vividly recall clambering up the maples in our backyard, stalking gray squirrels as they scampered across the wooden fence, playing basketball every weekday with the postman after he visited our mailbox, and collecting various rocks used for landscaping, sharing my discoveries with those of my neighborhood friends. These early adventures provided a fertile setting for developing a sense of place. 

As a child growing up in the 1990's, my sense of place rarely went beyond the bounds of my neighborhood and places that I could travel on foot or by bicycle. The daily experiences of the neighborhood were occasionally punctuated by trips to the grocery store, mall, and local parks as well as vacations at the lake cabin and to see relatives in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN). Perhaps the most salient aspects of my developing sense of place were not what I did, or discovered, but how these childhood places made me feel, or how I felt about them. At home, I felt comfortable and secure, at the park and in the backyard I felt adventurous, at the pool I felt extremely nervous-to the point of sometimes feeling physically ill. Though I have memories of the most minute feelings (too numerous to go into detail here), some were more enduring and profound then others. I vividly remember the senses of awe that I felt one snowy December evening when I was 10 or 11, looking out the window at the white blanket of snow covering the lawn, the street, and houses. Large flakes fell silently to the earth, illuminated by the glow of the streetlights reflecting off of the cloak of clouds above. I recall a feeling of tranquility as I looked into the night sky after returning from Dairy Queen with my family one summer evening. After experiencing the perpetual traffic and endless concrete of South Fargo, I wondered how anything could look so serene. The feelings resulting from my early interactions with place helped cultivate a relationship with the place(s) I inhabited and experienced. 

These early place experiences laid a foundation for my interest in places both in my own backyard, far away, and even imagined. I feel that I could not have ever developed as a person without connecting to place. This notion is perhaps why I chose to pursue geography as a field of study. Even though the 1990's were not that long ago, I feel that children today are growing up apart from the places they inhabit. Even at a primal age, a child's life is increasingly technocentric and rootless. Virtual spaces in many aspects have supplanted or relegated physical places. This apparent shift in society seems to present a profound trend-where cell phones, videogames, the Internet, social media, etc. contributes more to a child's development than grass, trees, physical play, streets and sidewalks- the stuff of physical places. I am extremely interested in how the increasing tendency to rely on and utilize technology affects younger generations' attitudes, beliefs, and experiences with places. Moreover, I am also interested in the converse, the effects of limited interactions with places on the development of children. Ultimately, my interests and intents revolve around reconnecting children to the places they inhabit, investigate, and imagine. 

Technology is never going to go away, on the contrary, it will only continue to proliferate at an unfathomable pace. Society will continue to become more reliant on virtual spaces and nodes of connectivity rather than physical interaction and experience. Although there appears to be a strong dichotomy between the electronic realm and the physical world, this division can be reconciled. Fortunately, Bob Boone has realized this with his proposed Habitation project. The use of technology to collect, analyze, and disseminate information about places provides a wonderful mode of merger. What is most exciting for me is the potential a project like this has for connecting children with places. Considering the contemporary child's love of everything digital, technology has the potential to be used a way back into place. For children, the addition of a technological component may make the exploration of a place interesting and relevant. Moreover, an accessible, bioregional, and collaborative database is an exciting and meaningful medium for contributing to an open sense of place and community, for adults as well as children. 

I am excited and privileged to be a part of this endeavor to learn and share our discoveries and explorations of Columbia and Boone County Missouri. I look forward to learning more about the concepts of place, place-based education, and bioregionalism in order to help further the intentions of this idea and project.