“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” -
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
What does it mean when we hear “sense of place?”
How do our bodies or senses work to help us develop an understanding of place?
All of us feel a tugging at our core when we near our home. Hopefully home is a safe refuge from the rest of the world. Sometimes our sense of smell can render us to another place and time, or we hear a song from our past that brings back a host of memories, or a taste that transports us. Our senses wake us up to who we are. At all times our senses are at work guiding us through our day, we have instinctual inclinations that show the way and help us make decisions. What we prefer to eat, where we choose to live, whom we select to be with, all are choices being made through perceptions formed by the wondrous gift of our senses. Past, present and future are reflected in the daily choices we make.
Terroir is a word that we identify with wine, the influences of location on the vines and finally the flavors in our glass. Now terroir is being used in association with other foods; coffee, cheese, bread, produce, tree fruit and berries. Terroir lends a sense of place to the foods, the influences of the soil, water, sunlight, temperature, climate, altitude, and cultural or technical differences in farming.
Terroir combines a number of conditions and underlines the idea of “systems thinking” where we look at the patterns that connect all of life. We might ask the question “How does the soil nourish who we are as individuals?” and ” How does the landscape shape our community?”
As a gardener I know that the quality of the soil, the life generating capacity of the earth, is of utmost importance. How does healthy soil assist my body in generating health? If it is true ” We are what we eat!” then we must be walking talking formations of the landscape. The air we breathe the soils we consume through the foods we eat, all become our bodies and replenish our spirit. Also, gardening brings a wealth of information stored in the seed, a historical living record of our horticultural forebears. Seeds are little bits of living knowledge that are our precious ancestry.
