Senses and Place

"A tangible sense of place develops in their [Pueblo dwellers] architecture because it is premised on such a powerful sense of belonging to a larger natural whole."  Tony Anella, "Learning from the Pueblos," p. 31

"... all the senses were utilized....Everything was touchable, knowable, and accessible."  Rina Swentzell, "Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day School, p. 57

These two quotations highlight the close relationship between our physical senses and our psychological or spiritual senses.  The aroma of almond cookies in Macao brought me from Asia back to Christmas in Minnesota in a second; immediately I was intensely aware of being away from home, even as I was comforted by the taste of almond in a cookie stamped with a Chinese character rather than in the shape of a Christmas tree.


The shape of the land around us, the type of vegetation, the quality of light: these effect us in ways beyond what we see.  This weekend I was on a bus tour of historic churches in southeast Minnesota with a group of historians of Lutheranism.  One remarked on the acres and acres of half-harvested crops: "There is a lot of empty out there."  Her's was the very opposite response to my initial reaction to a deep, mountain valley.  There I sensed, not security, but constraint.


Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, even tasting are the means by which we perceive our surroundings.  From those perceptions we gain a sense of where we are and who we are.  Anella quotes Harries: "true freedom is not freedom from constraint, but rather to be constrained only by what one really is, by one's essence."  Indeed, who one is, who we are, these identities involve boundaries that do constrain our freedom even as they provide a sense of belonging.