In her profound defense of monogamy, Joni Mitchell cites a striking quote from an Esquire magazine article: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” Mitchell writes, “What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories—and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over. You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love.”
That feels wise and true, both in relationships and other domains of life.
I encountered the quote while immersed in books about nature, place, and belonging, partly to prepare for my trip and partly because I’m weaving this thread into my next book. It’s impossible to separate belonging from place, but in our modern world, we are so disconnected from place that we don’t even comprehend our disconnection.
I can’t help but think about how Joni Mitchell’s wisdom applies to place.
If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different places. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.
What would it mean, if that were true?
It’s a salient question, as we give up Yosemite Valley in favor of returning to Truckee.
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When it comes to place, I have lived the spectrum of faithful exclusiveness to rampant promiscuity.
I spent the promiscuous years flying C-17A Globemaster III cargo planes around the world for the United States Air Force. Most trips lasted two to three weeks. We departed Washington state, typically stopped on the east coast for gas and cargo, and then ping-ponged around Europe, Asia, and the Middle East until it was time to come home. Most of my flying was 2004 to 2008, at the height of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Both countries had the gravitational attraction of black holes; we were lucky to fly anywhere else.
Still, we did travel. I flew to 21 countries in those four years. I spent dozens of nights in Germany and Spain, both major hubs for U.S. airlift at the time. My first deployment—a hardship tour, I know—was to Frankfurt. These were rewarding but exhausting years. Missions typically lasted twenty to thirty hours, hotel to hotel. I awoke in a different city and time zone each night. My body lost its circadian rhythm entirely. I usually slept in blocks of four to six hours, sometimes at night, sometimes in daylight, always hoping they would set me up properly for my next flight. Sometimes they did; when they didn’t, flights were excruciating. Occasionally my body crashed; I once slept 20 hours straight.
During these years, I practically lived on the road. I tallied 230 days away from home one year. At first I felt the thrill of adventure, but over time, I felt a dreary sameness about every new location I visited. Each overseas military base offered different versions of the same features: a commissary, a base exchange, restaurants, and a market where local merchants sold souvenirs and hand-made goods. Cities without bases were marginally more interesting. We stayed in the best hotels the government would pay for, picked famous restaurants that sometimes offered neatly-packaged cultural experiences, and piled into crew vans to hit the most famous tourist attractions. In Ghana, we went to a modest museum and wandered through a local market marveling at skinned animals hanging from hooks in the summer heat. In Athens, we squeezed in a trip to the Parthenon. Full days off were rare, but we took advantage of them, driving hours in rental cars to Rothenberg or Brussels.
I’m grateful for all these experiences, and mindful that many people would do anything to have similar opportunities. But over time, such travel wears thin. My travels were a succession of one-night stands, novel and thrilling at first, but then dreary in their unfulfilling repetition. With each departure, I left nothing but a vacant hotel room.
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I have had richer travel experiences, of course, typically while off-duty. My wife and I favored quiet getaways nestled in nature: the Olympic Peninsula, Mendocino, Point Reyes. Two years in Jordan gave us the chance to truly learn a place. We left with memories, friends, and a new language. We also traveled extensively to other countries in the Middle East, which was wonderful for learning the region but also left me with that weary morning-after feeling from my whirlwind C-17 days.
During these years, two things taught me that a much deeper sense of embeddedness in place might be possible. First, we saw and experienced how deeply rooted Jordanians and Palestinians were in their land. Generations lived together. They knew their lineage, their ancestral homes, particular houses and olive groves.
Second, I began to encounter masterful books by authors who knew particular places and landscapes with astonishing intimacy. These books were an acquired taste—protracted meditations that entailed sitting still, observing, listening. They demanded of the reader the same qualities that the authors internalized. A few early influences spring to mind, like Annie Dillard‘s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, inspired by a year in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, and Dakota by Kathleen Norris.
As I’ve gotten older, my reading tastes have shifted further in this direction. Mary Oliver‘s poetry and essays, crystallizing the beauty and wonder of the forests she roamed; Wendell Berry‘s works, doing the same for rural America and for Kentucky in particular; Barry Lopez’s 500-page Arctic Dreams. In Desert Solitaire, another work of meditation on landscape, Edward Abbey writes, “If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument.” Those dazzling lines express the same love that Joni Mitchell evokes: the infinite variety of a single thing.
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I have been writing this post off-and-on since my trip began, not sure where it would fit. Now we are returning to Truckee. One place, chosen over a multitude of places. It’s a pleasure to wake up in our meadow—I think of it as our meadow now—and make our morning drive to the Dark Horse Coffee Roastery. Hannah, who has a long background managing coffee shops, strikes up a conversation with the head roaster. He joins us at our table for a few minutes. Our first thread of human connection, weaving us into the tapestry of this place. Hannah texts a friend who lives nearby. We make plans for dinner and a hike together the following weekend. Another thread of connection.
After our morning writing session, we drive to Donner Summit. I find it harder and harder to write about these climbs because the novel has quickly become routine.
I’ve read that the lives of highly successful people often look rather boring, because they have structured their existence around the disciplined pursuit of their craft. Our afternoons at Donner Summit are beginning to have that feel. We park in the same gravel turnaround, put on the same harnesses, equip ourselves with the same gear, and make the same hike to the base of the same wall. I know most of the climbs on this face now: the route names, the cracks, the belay spots, the notches where one can easily climb over the imposing roof atop the slab. I enjoy this intimate familiarity. We are building a relationship with this place.
We climb Kindergarten Crack again, repeating a climb we made before our adventure in Yosemite. It’s not the masterful performance I’m hoping for. My awareness seems dulled by a brain fog, and I need to hang on the rope to rest at the same spot I did last time; it’s not a hard move but it feels intimidating, and I wear myself out summoning the courage to commit to it. Later, I struggle to find good placements to build a belay anchor.
Our progress is painfully slow. But this is the nature of building a real relationship: forward progress through ups and downs. The intoxicating novelty has worn off, and now we’re just working, trying things, learning, discussing what we can do better.
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All of this holds lessons for my eventual homecoming to Montgomery, Alabama. It’s not the place I would have chosen for myself, but it’s the place I have. I haven’t met many Montgomery residents who love the place, even those who’ve lived there for decades. We swap stories about the unlikely ways we arrived in the city, and we all marvel at the fact we’re still there. Somehow, life pinned us in place. Although we daydream of moving elsewhere—and maybe someday we will—a deep, patient love flows like a subterranean river. In a city where every step forward seems matched by a step back, we each feel a quiet calling to make the city better than it would otherwise be.
I keep reading authors of particular places because they teach me how to love a place: how to see, how to learn the names of things, how to weave together the history, geography, biology, and sociology of a place into a coherent and meaningful understanding.
We will likely only be in Truckee for a few more days, but our return is giving me the opportunity to practice faithfulness to a place. The disappointment I felt yesterday at leaving Yosemite Valley has faded. I’m happy we’re here.