Another Place: (a deep map)
On packing up my life and hopping atop my single saddle
I’m reading PrairyErth, a book about Chase County, Kansas (meaning “people of the south wind”), for the first time. In it, the writer, William Least Heat-Moon, talks about looking over the expanse of a prairie landscape in the Flint Hills where the last great expanses of American Prairie exist, where you can still look across the landscape and see nothing but grasses taller than the native Osage, Pawnee, Kansa, and Wichita people who lived among the hills for over 6,000 years. He likens the visual experience to looking out over the expanse of the ocean. The landscape fades to the same volume, everything constant and everything seemingly the same. You have to learn to notice the details, the spikes in waves, the blue shadow against the orange, the big bluestem grass against itself. You might be sitting atop your horse at the edge of a prairie expanse or standing at the hull of a sailboat; what’s happening is happening within.
It’s not that I had to learn to think flat — the prairies rarely are — but I had to begin thinking open and lean, seeing without set points of obvious focus, noticing first the horizon and then drawing my vision back toward middle distance where so little appears to exist. I came to understand that prairies are nothing but grass as the sea is nothing but water, that most prairie life is within the place: under the stems, below the turf, beneath the stones…. (p. 28)
People who grew up looking out over Lake Michigan, or out over the sea, or a prairie, or a flat plain, the “flyover zones” as coastal dwellers call them, know this.
Heat-Moon calls this text a “deep map.” A deep map goes “beyond simple landscape/history-based topographical writing to include and interweave autobiography, archaeology, stories, memories, folklore, traces, reportage, weather, interviews, natural history, science, and intuition. In its best form, the resulting work arrives at a subtle, multi-layered and ‘deep’ map of a small area of the earth1.” This is the art and exploration I’ve been drawn to my entire life and I now know it has a name. Finally, weather and intuition are considered valid inputs!
While digital in format, I think of Queering the Map, a project I’ve been following for years, and again since the violence and horrors by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza has intensified. The queer love stories shared from Gaza are heartbreaking and are an important reminder that there are histories, lost love, first kisses, people who have come out and those who haven’t, there is endless depth to the people and places that war intentionally abstracts.
As of this past week, I’ve either sold, given away, or stored most of my belongings. I moved out of my 1912 apartment where I’ve lived alone the past two years, a place that held me well through my molting. I removed the Single Saddle horse painting from the wall, painted by my friend Will after he was inspired by the song of the same name (the earliest recorded version of the song Single Saddle is by Vaughn Monroe, but I have to believe it was a true cowboy folk song, author unknown). In the painting, the brown horse and its silly smile gallop toward something off the edge, something we can’t see. The abyss is frightening in its unknowability and yet the horse is oblivious, either a fool or the most courageous steed around trusting that what’s out there is worth galloping towards.
Back in winter, my partner and I decided to shed most of the physical parts of our respective and collective lives so that we could make way for new and unknown experiences. For me, it felt like the comfortable life I’d built was directly preventing me from fully pursuing (with courage) my life at Another Place and the building of a home there. The past decade of my life has been spent pursuing comfort with this ever-tugging feeling toward the part of me I wish lived more audibly: the courageous part, the part that can live without knowing what I’m doing in September. Now, I don’t know if living without a defined plan is “for me,” but I’ve decided that I need to find out. I love having a home to design and feel comfortable in, a place to retreat to. And still I’m reminded time and again that a defined plan doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. I want to live in the truth that all of life is the balance of some planning alongside the unpredictable.
I have with me my two cats, 4 bags of clothes (still, I’ve already noticed, too much), some gear, and my treasured chefs’ knives. I stored most of my sweaters, but I brought three cast iron pans and 6 tiny bottles of wilderness wash, which I rarely use and only have because I keep forgetting I have some and then buy it again. The past month has been moving hell filled with millions of decisions, mostly, with some moments of bliss: biking around one of the Movement mornings in Detroit, a sunset smashburger at Belle Isle beach, bagels on the deck of the commonwealth house (possibly the last time, as it seems everyone is moving these days). Detroit is my home forever, but this time is about remembering the multiplicity of belonging to different places. For the next few months, I’ll be living in Elberta, Michigan, which is about 15 minutes from Another Place by car or Benzie Bus.
Sawbill Surf Club is a house in Elberta, built in 1890 and purchased by my friend Kelly around the time I bought Another Place. The town was formed by settlers with the last name “Greenwood” after the land was stolen from the Indigenous Odawa and Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ people in the Treaty of Saginaw (1838, Cession 205). Sawbill has a porch and door on all four sides of the house, each painted the same color: “Patrick’s Perfect Day,” the swatch says, a sort of robin’s egg blue. Who is Patrick? What made his day perfect?
A few years ago, before I’d found Another Place, I answered a prompt: Describe your perfect day. One scene in the day I outlined is coming back to me: friends are visiting and we’ve spent the day at the beach. I somehow found property that I could afford right next to Lake Michigan, and when we’re spent from the sun, a few of us bike the short distance back from the big lake to the property where we begin to make dinner. Someone’s starting the fire, others are chopping, one’s shaking up italian dressing in a bag with red peppers for the grill like they saw their dad do when they were young. Later, after we’ve eaten and had a fire accompanied by three guitars, we retreat into our tents and me, into a treehouse. I fantasized about this then, thinking that I could buy property a short biking distance from the big lake. Instead, here I am, writing from the back “Patrick’s Perfect Day” porch a couple hours after running the 1.2 miles to Lake Michigan, hiking up my shorts, and walking into the water. I think how a fantasy can encourage or prohibit you. As I’ve written about, my fantasies can be a form of escapism, not always positive, but most often my fantasies are something I love about myself. The visions within them inform the way I want to live while leaving space to expand or contract into the unknown. A few years later, I’m living parts of my perfect day in ways I couldn’t have anticipated then, with collectivism, community, and relationships at the forefront. I guess I’m saying that I’m grateful.
I recognize now that what I’m pursuing is a deep map of Another Place. It started five years ago when I realized it was within my power to investigate my own family’s history and The Place, the small cabin on the Betsie River that my late grandpa Robert built. It’s continued through studying parcel maps, interviewing Bart, my grandpa’s old neighbor, reading articles from the historical society in Benzonia, studying studying studying how to afford to buy land. The map has been informed by the weather, by my intuition, by the sandhill cranes that cried their prehistoric call as they flew over Another Place the day we carved the driveway. The deep map is constantly being formed by standing on the hill and looking out over the maples, white pines, and loam. The map materialized a bit more yesterday when I sat in a lime green folding chair in the woods and ate a BLT, looking out over a site where I think a small guest cabin will someday go.
I recognize now that what I’m pursuing is a deep map of Another Place.
What gives a deep map its dimensions are the relationships within it. This past weekend, I went to a barter fair nearby and met a guy who screenprinted me a shirt (pictured) in trade for helping him build a foundation for his house, an objectively uneven trade for me but worth it for the skills gained, and walked away with a rubber mallet, two old books on sailing, and Kay’s late husband’s LLbean gum shoes. This week, I’ll have dinner with Jim and Linda, my land neighbors who I’ve been working with to find a buyer for their property, someone who won’t cut down the trees, making it all money honey by calling it “timber.” Another night, I’ll go see the progress at Vonnie’s round house and have a bonfire at Another Place.
I picked up a copy of the Betsie Current local newspaper and thought of a line from one of my favorite poems, “Self-Portrait at 28” by the late David Berman (Silver Jews): “Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and think
‘I am about to learn what it's like to live here.’"
Here I am, learning what it’s like.
What’s happening at Another Place
I’m trying to push against the feeling that I can only share big, momentous updates with you all here. In reality, most of what happens (in this process, in life) are small, seemingly insignificant moments. That said, turns out a lot has happened!
In late winter, Ellen, Ellis and I (the name-plot thickens) walked the property with Thomas, a local natural builder who will help build the house. This felt momentous. Ellis made us espresso on the tailgate of his little red truck and poured us each a tiny cup which we held with our thumbs and forefingers as we walked. It began to lightly rain. At one point, we all stood silently at the place where we think the house should go. Thomas, an older guy, thin and healthy wearing one of those Italian cyclist-kinda lookin hats with the tiny brims and an oversized well-worn Columbia rain jacket that, despite the rain, he never used the hood of, looked at me and said, This is a special place. I’ve known this, but maintaining consistent trust in my own feelings is exhausting. To hear Thomas affirm this, to hear friends who have visited and camped here say this, feels euphoric. Afterward, we traveled the five miles over to my friend’s family distillery, ate pizza, and strategized about how to build this house.
Ellis and I have started budgeting down to the screws and nails needed, and he’s working on drawing up a site plan so that I can request quotes from local excavation, septic, and well companies (all required services to build in my county). In spring, I set out neon orange flags at each of the four corners of the future house site. The site is nestled between a low hill and the forest, private. It gets sun in the winter, and is shaded somewhat in the summer. It’s just twenty feet from the black raspberry patch that grows on the hill, and I can easily imagine a sauna tucked into the threshold to the woods. It feels right.
A couple months ago, my land neighbor, Jim, let me know that they’d begun the process of listing their 10 neighboring acres, mostly sugar maple and beech forest. Before he listed it, he wanted to express to me that he’d love if I, or someone in my life, could buy the property. Jim and his wife Linda are in their 80s and accepting of the limited good time they have left. He feared that if he listed it at the price the realtors suggested ($100k! that’s $30k more than I bought mine for just 18 months ago), no one would buy it and he’d be forced to clear cut the forest to afford their life and medical expenses. He loves the trees as much or more than I do and once had a very similar dream of building their home tucked into the stand.
So I went into frantic mode, made a seven-page Google Doc, and made calls. I posted on Instagram and over forty people responded with interest (heartening!). I talked with people on the phone and walked a few people through options for financing vacant land purchase. The opportunity to essentially have a hand in choosing my landmate(s) felt (feels) intoxicating. Collective space and co-ownership is the dream, after all. As of today, my friend is seriously interested and will walk the property in a few weeks. Regardless, active outreach like this has revealed that Another Place is what it is because it doesn’t exist in isolation; it is only special when shared. We hope, we hope.
This summer, we (at this point, a collective we) plan to build a small shed structure to keep materials dry. I’m in a place where I don’t yet have many skills and it seems everything costs $3,000, so prioritization is necessary. A shed first, or an outhouse? Both? A tiny house while we build the main house?? Or maybe a camper? Or would it be smart to spend $50k and build a garage + apartment and work on the house later? What if I die? I don’t have $50k! And so these questions swirl, and I trust that it’ll become clearer as I learn from people, live my way into it, and try.
And so I didn’t renew my lease. I’m in northern michigan, writing this from the back porch (another perfect day for Patrick) as my cat sits beside me in his little mesh cat backpack and watches starlings and chipmunks. I can’t wait to run to the beach again and jump in. I’m at five days mostly alone, with Ellen arriving this week, and finally feeling the peace that I imagined, the feeling that guided me when I was in the trenches of negotiating and deciding a fate for every single one of my belongings.
I’m creating a deep map, I’m living my way into the answers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_map