Reading Wovember has been fascinating for me. This morning I decided to view the video, Hefting, created by Eden Arts and it really got me thinking. Before we get to my thinking let's talk about "hefting" with regard to sheep.
Eden Arts interviewed people in a particular grazing land to talk about their flock hefting. Through the interviews it becomes clear that the people being interviewed also experience that instinct to stay close to home. Should you want to see all 15 minutes of the video (I found the scenery well worth the time) check it out here.
Now to my thinking about hefting. I have long held the opinion that growing up on a farm shaped me in ways that do not compare well with the shaping of someone who grew up in a more cosmopolitan setting. (Cosmopolitan, for this discussion, can be a town of merely 1,000 people.) Rural life can be rather isolated thus creating a need for one to be able to entertain one's self. Perhaps this explains why going out to find something to do is rarely the #1 thing that comes to mind for me when I want to be entertained.
Thus I feel hefted to the land where my parents brought me home from the hospital and still live today. It is a place for grounding, a place once known very well to me. The landscape of the farm for at least 18 years was imprinted into my very being. The 5 acres or the back 16 are places of meaning to me and my family with the creek, woods and marsh (perhaps all should be capitalized) identifying specific geographic spots. When I drive onto the dooryard* a calm from my childhood rushes over me, something that hasn't been duplicated in the other 25 or so places I've lived in during the intervening years.
Then there are the people that go along with the place. Although the number of them I know continues to diminish, I know these people better than most others I encounter. Many of us are related or their parents have been friends of my parents for, well forever, with regard to my lifetime. I know my brothers even though we have lived far apart for those 40 + years. I know their wives, my sister-in-laws. I am truly hefted to the place and people there. It remains the only place I call home.
When I've gone home with my sons I've been able to enjoy walking down the same paths I did when I was their age or I watched them throw or try to skip rocks into the lake like I did. We could swing on the swings of my childhood and visit local visitor sites. My sons have had ample time to enjoy my parents and siblings like I did in their places. Thus my sons too have become hefted to that farm. And now as they have married and grown into men I can see they are drawn back to that place with its calm. Hopefully with the arrival of a new generation we'll be able to have the entire flock become at least a little hefted to this place.
It seems very possible for people to grow into a landscape and for it to grow into their very being, leaving a permanent imprint. An imprint that can be passed on from generation to generation. If sheep are capable of carrying a memory of place, humans too, no matter how far we travel from our hefts must carry this memory as well. It must be that the place of our birth, marks us and leaves its traces within us all.
*space between the house and the barn
- Hefting (or heafing) – the instinct in some breeds of (sheep) for keeping to a certain heft (a small local area) throughout their lives. Allows different farmers in an extensive landscape such as moorland to graze different areas without the need for fences, each ewe remaining on her particular area. Lambs usually learn their heft from their mothers. (From Wikipedia's listing under Sheep Husbandry.)
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| Sheep in their heft |
Eden Arts interviewed people in a particular grazing land to talk about their flock hefting. Through the interviews it becomes clear that the people being interviewed also experience that instinct to stay close to home. Should you want to see all 15 minutes of the video (I found the scenery well worth the time) check it out here.
Now to my thinking about hefting. I have long held the opinion that growing up on a farm shaped me in ways that do not compare well with the shaping of someone who grew up in a more cosmopolitan setting. (Cosmopolitan, for this discussion, can be a town of merely 1,000 people.) Rural life can be rather isolated thus creating a need for one to be able to entertain one's self. Perhaps this explains why going out to find something to do is rarely the #1 thing that comes to mind for me when I want to be entertained.
Thus I feel hefted to the land where my parents brought me home from the hospital and still live today. It is a place for grounding, a place once known very well to me. The landscape of the farm for at least 18 years was imprinted into my very being. The 5 acres or the back 16 are places of meaning to me and my family with the creek, woods and marsh (perhaps all should be capitalized) identifying specific geographic spots. When I drive onto the dooryard* a calm from my childhood rushes over me, something that hasn't been duplicated in the other 25 or so places I've lived in during the intervening years.
Then there are the people that go along with the place. Although the number of them I know continues to diminish, I know these people better than most others I encounter. Many of us are related or their parents have been friends of my parents for, well forever, with regard to my lifetime. I know my brothers even though we have lived far apart for those 40 + years. I know their wives, my sister-in-laws. I am truly hefted to the place and people there. It remains the only place I call home.
When I've gone home with my sons I've been able to enjoy walking down the same paths I did when I was their age or I watched them throw or try to skip rocks into the lake like I did. We could swing on the swings of my childhood and visit local visitor sites. My sons have had ample time to enjoy my parents and siblings like I did in their places. Thus my sons too have become hefted to that farm. And now as they have married and grown into men I can see they are drawn back to that place with its calm. Hopefully with the arrival of a new generation we'll be able to have the entire flock become at least a little hefted to this place.
It seems very possible for people to grow into a landscape and for it to grow into their very being, leaving a permanent imprint. An imprint that can be passed on from generation to generation. If sheep are capable of carrying a memory of place, humans too, no matter how far we travel from our hefts must carry this memory as well. It must be that the place of our birth, marks us and leaves its traces within us all.
*space between the house and the barn
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