In the twenties, Carl Sauer talked about the "cultural landscape". Simply put, the cultural landscape is the product of the physical landscape and a a culture - physiography influences what people can do with the land, but cultural norms and values transform the landcape too. When I first came across the concept, it made perfect sense to me: on a road trip to the Kitchener-Waterloo area when I was still in elementary (or "public", in the words of the day) school, there was something that made me feel really at home.
To put it into context, I was only nine when we left southern Germany. I was old enough to have had some measure of independence through the combination of a bus pass and a bicycle, and I had my own mental map of our landscape and spatial relationships (everything within about 3 km of the farm, anyway). To say that I missed the landscape fiercely when we moved here would be an understatement. In my mind, I turned it from something that is admittedly lovely (the foothills of the Alps, with farmsteads dating back hundreds of years and towns that have mideaval cores) into an icon. At 14, I was convinced that I would never see it again. My parents were not the sort to frivolously spend money, and thus trips to Germany were never an option. It didn't occur to me until I was 18 that I could make it happen on my own, and through the luck of a scholarship that freed me from having to make as much money as possible every summer and still be able to pay for school, I went back for the first time almost 10 years after we'd left. I was the first of my siblings to do so, though Marlene joined me in a matter of weeks.
I'm not sure, now, what I expected. I was still caught up in the wonder of travelling. I didn't mind that I had a middle seat on a Hapag Lloyd charter plane, that it got to Frankfurt at 6 a.m., or that I had a child's knowledge of the country I was headed to. I walked out through customs, and there was this wonder that I was actually in Europe - you know, like when you dream about something for years and then it happens and you're not quite sure if it's real. The next month was more than I'd hoped for, and it started a whole new story.
See, I had mentally prepared myself for *not* loving it. What you think is wonderful as a child looks different at 19, I was sure. And people would have aged (with very few visits from one or two aunts and uncles, I hadn't seen the Germany part of my family for a decade after all - and that included the grandmother who I spent more time with than my parents while we still lived there). I was wholly unprepared for the impact of the landscape. I didn't expect that being there would hurt so much: it looked so right to me, and I loved the farms and the fields and the woods and the childhood paths I found so easily again so much, it hurt realizing that in a few weeks I wouldn't have it anymore. I started grieving its loss from the moment I saw it again. My German family made fun of all the pictures I took, and sure, I was a total tourist that way - but how do you explain to them that you need to capture it, because, unlike them, you can't have it?
For the next three years, I spent as much time in Germany as in Canada. I did a year of my undergraduate degree there, and I stayed as long as I possibly could. Eight months later, as soon as I wrote my last exam, I hopped on another plane to spend the next four months there again. The scholarship paid for tuition and then some, but I didn't have piles of cash: my parents helped a little, but mostly, I always had jobs - even in Germany. And I flew with carriers such as Air Pakistan, because they were the cheapest and $600 including taxes and fees was about as much as I could afford and still go.
And still, realizing that flying isn't that big a deal (even if it is expensive), it wasn't enough. I spent one summer cycling al the roads within 30 km of Wangen. I got to know the little villages and shortcuts better than those who had lived there their whole lives - at least, on the surface I knew them better. Again, I don't think the German family understood why I needed to spend so much time exploring every path, and I never tried to explain it. That last summer, I had a feeling I wouldn't be coming back for a while (after all, I was due to start grad school), and I thought maybe I could store enough of it, or maybe I thought I'd see it so much that it would be ordinary and I wouldn't miss it.
So I wrote a master's thesis on Old Order Mennonite farming systems, because I wanted to figure out *what* it was that made a culture transform a landcape from a drumlin field to something that felt like home even if I'd never been there before. And, along the way, I figured something else out: that I feel the same way about certain landscapes here. Not so much the fields of southern Ontario, but the northern Ontario bush. It, too, is a part that I feel the need to absorb as much as possible, just in case I ever lose it.
I stayed away from Germany for five years. I went back for a month at Christmas, and it was fun, and it was as beautiful as ever - but for the first time, I also missed Ontario while I was there. I missed the feeling of having a definite place in society - by now, I was an adult, and living the usual life of car, apartment, job, social life. Hanging out with aging family (and now grown-up cousins) and university friends was fun, but I didn't feel like I fit as well as I had in 1993.
And over the years, the Shield and its landscapes took on the same iconic meaning as southern Germany had once. I love the Shield in a way I can't explain to anyone who doesn't have that relationship to it. It doesn't hurt yet, to look at it, but I worry about not having it anymore. I worry about my parents selling the camp (an inevitability, I know) and not having a "home" in that landscape anymore. Every time I go, it gets a little harder, to realize that it may not be something I can take granted forever. That's where the whole backcountry obsession started: I put activities and skills in place which will still keep me connected to the Shield even if I no longer have a base in it.
So, I'm a little screwed, loving two places that can't be part of the same lifestyle - not in a belonging sense. My solution to that has been to stay away from southern Germany. For six years, I didn't go - by now, I could have afforded it, and there are vacations - I spend as much on a kayaking vacation as a trip to Germany would cost, after all. But it just made life easier, not having to be torn all the time. I made the decision that here is where I belong, and it would be enough.
So why did I do it? Why did I let myself slip into a quick weekend in the foothills again? Because for the past couple of months, I've been mentally totaling how many aeroplan points I would have by the end of the year, and would they be enough for a flight to Stuttgart, and... I'm exactly where I didn't want to be. Except, not quite: this time around, it's not as hard. I'm not saying it's not difficult, missing a place - interpret place broadly, place in a large family, place in space, place in the belonging sense - but it's not *as* difficult. And that's pretty good.
Bottom line? This - here, Canada - is home, in a way that no other place likely will ever be. It shouldn't come as a surprise - my life is here. But still, I've been doing a bit of reading on second-generation immigrants, and I fit the pattern pretty well (though it's a weird call - technically, I'm not second generation. Yet I don't really consider myself first generation either, because my parents are here). But that's the beauty of Canada. So many of us are first and second generation immigrants, that this, too, creates a place of belonging - a shared lack of shared traditions? Not just a cultural, but a psychological landscape. I don't know. I just know that it's easier to live here without having been born here or have six generations of ancestors here than any other place I can imagine.
(And I need another 26,000 aeroplan points. Fewer after next week.)
Posted by Johanna at March 10, 2005 19:31 PM