Sense of place is a curious thing. One's early years are drawn together by a ball of immediate sensory impressions, deprived of the memory required for context and utilitarian in their scope. The various locations of these years are forgotten in favor of a dim sense of sensory familiarity which reemerges whenever present placement may overlap with past. Beyond these years, however, lies a development of identity almost foundational to the human experience: the creation of a cast of backgrounds upon which all ones memories take place and which may carry as much significance and nostalgia as the action preserved in the memory itself. Of these backgrounds, the most evocative, rich and scintillating, I find, are those of one's natural environ. Whether it be blasted stonescapes of moonrock in strange deserted places, or familiar enclosed eastern woodland aged by time's perception, natural landmarks underly memory and perception like no other setting readily accessible. Thereby, to find oneself amidst such features for a great time's length results in the place's incorporation into one's identity, as the collective force of several memories so characterized by it gives the location a personal significance. In such fashion, in reflecting on my life, I find a cast of natural places and events that help define who I am, and the way my relationship with those places has changed over time.
The place of my birth was in the Pacific Northwest, amidst the boughs of a beautiful and fragile forest unlike any other. Unfortunately, I left that place at the age of just five ears old, so most of my conscious memories are set in a different background: the sprawling Sonoran Desert. Several of its arid expanses became familiar to me, and the privilege of living my life in such a setting was not lost on me when I did eventually leave. There, the natural world became for me not just a background, but a living thing, a location intrinsic with life and daily variability. My life diverted there, and, in sincerity, it may be said that most of my life afterward has been defined by what did or did not transpire in that desert realm.
Transience is an unfortunate perception, and such constraints as time and place are preceivable only by their consequence. My life has been shaped by nature. Of this, I know with more certainty than would be capable of being expressed by one with my faculties. Thereby, in a similar way must I finish, for the ephemeral eternity does not beggar for time.