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Place matters

  • 2 days ago
  • 3 min read

Denying it harms us and the planet


Scene of a lake, with a tree in the foreground and someone's feet resting on the tree, implying relaxing out doors.
Relaxing in one of my favorite valleys in Wyoming (Image: B.G. Merkle, ©2020)

Dear Troublemakers,


I’m writing you from a brain fog brought on by two weeks of work travel, intensive research project planning, attending a massive, new-to-me conference (like >10,000 participants), a host of family-related matters to attend to, our pending move to a new lodging arrangement, and the pulsing, enticing art and writing ideas that have been put on hold as I deal with all those other things.


I have a lot of ideas for School of Good Trouble floating around, too. But, I haven’t been able to wrangle any of them into a fully fledged essay for you.


So, here are some topics and thoughts of possible interest, a tapas of inspiration, support, and musings for your pondering pleasure. ¡A disfrutar!


  • I’m reading a friend’s dissertation before she defends—both to help her and because I have been begging to read it so I can engage more deeply with her ideas. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of vital connections between student self-identity as writers, the role of nature and other connections/relationships beyond our individual self, and how an ecological approach can help us effectively teach students to write. There are SO MANY awesome sources, quotes, and ideas in her dissertation that I am thrilled to now be in contact with. They would have been an excellent additional layer to my new book on teaching science students to write. (And maybe/hopefully I can work them into a second edition, if we ever get to write one!) Tea bag-tag synopsis: Get thee to the literature on ecocomposition. It’s only a slice of what my brilliant friend is writing about, but it’s a great starting point for us STEM folks.

    Here are two of my favorite examples, quotes from scholars she is citing. 👇


    “Writing and writers are not just like ecological systems but are precisely ecological systems.” —Marilyn Cooper. “Identity and selfhood, when viewed from an ecological perspective, can be defined as the awareness an individual organism has of its membership in society.” —Christian Weisser



  • You are allowed to miss a place. You are allowed to care about a place.[1] In the ecocomposition spirit, I’ve been mulling over the very real impact that a specific place or building, type of weather, friendship group, or even workplace has upon our identity, sense of belonging, and understanding of the world. I’m re-learning that suppressing the conflicting feelings that are inevitable during life and location transitions denies this important impact. And the reality that suppressing/denying our feelings about these places is part of what is making too many of us so sick physically and emotionally.


    Tea bag-tag synopsis? Connection, not isolation—and interdependence, not stoicism—can save us. But we have to actually connect, actually feel.

    A nine-image gallery grid. Top row, left to right: geraniums and other flowers in a yard, a view of hills from the top of a ridge, a rainbow in a neighborhood. Middle row, left to right: Potted plants on a backyard patio, looking through trees to a river and a small village on the far side of the river, an abundant backyard garden. Bottom row, left to right: a chipmunk perched on the edge of a large metal dog bowl, getting a drink, graffiti on a train car, two magpies on a wire fence.
    Places I miss and still feel connected to (Images: B.G. Merkle, ©2010-2026)

    • I’m looking for and taking the time to really notice art in my community (at cafés, public art, murals, graffiti on trains, sketching and scribbling with kids in my life—all of it). Doing so is connecting me more deeply to the placeness [2] of the town I live in and the role this specific, high-dry-and-epically-windy place has in shaping my sense of self, my work in the world, and my relations in it. Tea bag-tag synopsis? Humans are hardwired to create—place, connection, beauty, expression. (Translation: Fuck AI.)


      Three images. 1. A deer skull with thousands of small beads glued to it, creating an illustration of green hills, blue sky with white clouds, and numerous red wildflowers known as paintbrush. 2. A trompe l'oeil mural of a yellow post-it note with a jackalope (jackrabbit with antelope horns) and text that reads "Our greatest fear should not be failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter." 3. Child's sketches of a bird, a dandelion, and other nature observations.


How about you?

How is the place you are right now impacting your experience of the world?



NOTES

[1] Saying this for a friend (truly). But also, again, always, to myself. And to us all, each other. Sure, it is important to discern between our own feelings and those of others, but it is at least as vital to have and deal with our own. Feelings are part of what makes us human; they have evolutionary and individual purpose. And feelings connected to place and our relationships to nature and the more-than-human world are some of the most essential.


[2] If you’re feeling ambivalent about where you are right now, Melody Warnick’s book This is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are could be really helpful. I appreciated a lot of the ideas she explores when I read it last year during a period of deep tension about where I was.

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commnatural sciencecommunication research & practice Bethann Garramon Merkle

© 2025 by Bethann Garramon Merkle.

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