"UKIAH IN THE UNIVERSE"

For some time now, I’ve been pondering the subject of place. For some reason I’ve been feeling a need to find where it is that I am positioned within the cosmos. It seems that merely knowing that I live in a town named Ukiah, in Northern California is not enough to satisfy this need I have for locating myself in the universe.

Knowing my location within America helps me some. Finding my position on the map gives me a general sense of where I am as far as longitude and latitude goes. And having driven across country helped in the same way. It was less than a year ago that I arrived here in my pickup truck with my dog Dixie to meet up with my wife and sons. The route Dixie and I followed was 80 West, from Connecticut, with a slight detour north on Route 90 to visit some friends in Jackson, Wyoming. For the last leg of our journey we turned south and then headed straight across Utah and Nevada into California on 80 again, then through the hills on 20 from Williams into town. This was the start of my search for a sense of place here.

Since settling in Ukiah, I’ve driven south to San Francisco a number of times to pick up relatives at the airport. I’ve also driven to eastward for lacrosse games near Sacramento, gone west to Fort Bragg several times to visit a boat builder and returned through Mendocino, Filo and Boonville. I’ve traveled north to Willits and headed northeast through Potter Valley up to Lake Pillsbury. These journeys in the immediate vicinity—all within 200 miles—have given me a general sense of where I live, but not altogether a complete picture. It does not satisfy a deeper need to know where I am.

In my lifelong job as a journalist, I’ve made bigger circles on the globe. Assignments have taken me to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, Asia and India. The farthest afield I’ve been from our country was on an expedition to Antarctica. Having traveled to the bottom of the world has given me a relative sense of the size of this planet. For me it is true that the more one travels the smaller the Earth seems. Although the trip to the bottom of the world definitely felt like a long one—it took four airplane flights followed by a five-day crossing of the Southern Ocean aboard an icebreaker. But, thinking back on the trip, the planet still seems to be of manageable size.

To add another point of view, I remember attending a talk given by one of the astronauts who had traveled to the moon. He had a perspective that few of us will ever have in our lifetimes. He told the audience that while standing on the moon he raised his hand and hid the entire planet Earth behind his thumb. It was sobering, he said, to realize that he’d just covered up his whole life’s experience—everyone and everything he’d ever known up to then. The astronaut told us that he returned to earth with a renewed sense of sanctity for the place we call home.

Which brings me back to Ukiah. Somehow, this location, this town, although I haven’t journeyed more than a few hundred miles in any direction since arriving here, has begun to settle into my consciousness. I’ve come to realize that the place I must look in order to locate myself in the cosmos is in a more inward direction.

A few weeks ago when I was invited to attend an Indian sweat lodge I gained a deeper understanding of the place where I live.

What I realized was this: There are Native Americans who live here, who have always lived here. The Indians I bonded with are imbued with this particular section of the planet. Their father’s lived here. Their father’s fathers—and on and on—walked this ground, hunted, raised crops, raised families right here.

Being amongst these men gave me a real sense of a people who truly, without question, belong to this valley. This is not to say that we immigrants don’t. Immigrants, as it is often said, bring new blood to a place—fresh ideas and different ways of living that strengthen a community. Recent settlers like me also have something to add; it is called perspective.

And it’s perspective that brings me full circle. When I sit in my backyard at night and look up into the universe, thankful to be able to gaze into such a clear sky at the untold number of stars, I feel more connected to the cosmos than I ever have. Although stargazing apparently seems to be looking outward, I feel as if that outward view has been internalized. I now realize that the sense of place I had been seeking on maps can only be found with my internal GPS.

In the pitch dark of the sweat lodge, I began to feel that somehow I’d finally arrived home. This town, north of San Francisco, west of Sacramento, South of Eureka and east of the Pacific Ocean (and somewhere under the stars) is now to be found in a very specific location within me—in my heart.