Essay

Staying Put Scott ruSSell SanderS

Scott Russell Sanders is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggen- heim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a pro- lific writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are Divine Animal: A Novel (2014), and a collection of eco-science fiction stories titled Dancing in Dreamtime (2016).

As a boy in Ohio, I knew a farm family, the Millers, who not only saw but suffered from three tornadoes. The father, mother, and two sons were pulling into their driveway after church when the first tornado hoisted up their mobile home, spun it around, and carried it off. With the insurance money, they built a small frame house on the same spot. Several years later, a second tornado peeled off the roof, splintered the garage, and rustled two cows. The younger of the sons, who was in my class at school, told me that he had watched from the barn as the twister passed through, “And it never even mussed up my hair.” The Millers rebuilt again, raising a new garage on the old foundation and adding another story to the house. That upper floor was reduced to kindling by a third tornado, which also pulled out half the apple trees and slurped water from the stock pond. Soon after that, I left Ohio, snatched away by college as forcefully as by any cyclone. Last thing I heard, the family was preparing to rebuild yet again.

Why did the Millers refuse to move? I knew them well enough to say they were neither stupid nor crazy. After the garage disappeared, the father hung a sign from the mailbox that read: Tornado Alley. He figured the local terrain would coax future whirlwinds in their direction. Then why not move? Plain stubbornness was a factor: These were peo- ple who, once settled, might have remained at the foot of a volcano or on the bank of a flood-prone river or beside an earthquake fault. They had relatives nearby, helpful neighbors, jobs and stores and schools within a short drive, and those were all good reasons to stay. But the main reason they stayed, I believe, was that the Millers had invested so much of their lives in the land, planting orchards and gardens, spread- ing manure on the fields, digging ponds, building sheds, seeding pas- tures. This farm was not just so many acres of dirt, easily exchanged for an equal amount elsewhere; it was a particular place, intimately known, worked on, dreamed over, cherished.

Psychologists tell us that we answer trouble with one of two impulses, either fight or flight. I believe that the Millers exhibited a third instinct, that of staying put. When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither fight nor flight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least, before perishing, we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still, I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rab- bit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own. If indulged only for a moment, this reverent impulse may amount to little; but if sustained for months and years, as by the Millers on their farm, it may yield marvels. The Millers knew better than to fight a tornado, and they chose not to flee. Their commitment may have been foolhardy, but it was also grand. I suspect that most human achievements worth admiring are the result of such commitment, such devotion.

These tornado memories dramatize a choice we are faced with constantly: whether to go or

stay, whether to move to a situation that is safer, richer, easier, more attractive, or to stick with what we have and make what we can of it. If the shine goes off our marriage, our house, our car, do we trade it for a new one? If the fertility leaches out of our soil, the creativity out of our job, the money out of our pockets, do we start over somewhere else? There are voices enough, both inner and outer, urging us to deal with difficulties by pulling up stakes and heading for new territory. I know them well, for they have been calling to me all my days. Claims for the virtues of moving on are familiar and seductive to Americans, this nation founded by immigrants and shaped by restless seekers. I wish to raise here a con- trary voice, to say a few words on behalf of staying put, of learning the ground, of going deeper.

Exile usually suggests banishment, a forced departure from one’s homeland. Famines and tyrants and wars do indeed force entire popula- tions to flee; but most people who move, especially within the industri- alized world, do so by choice. Novelist Salman Rushdie chose to leave his native India for England. In his book of essays Imaginary Homelands, he celebrates “the migrant sensibility”: “The effect of mass migrations has been the creation of radically new types of human being: people who root themselves in ideas rather than places, in memories as much as in material things” (Rushdie 124). I quarrel with Rushdie because he articulates as eloquently as anyone the orthodoxy that I wish to counter: Rushdie’s belief that movement is inherently good, staying put is bad; that uprooting brings tolerance, while rootedness breeds intolerance; that imaginary homelands are preferable to geographical ones; that to be modern, enlightened, fully of our time is to be displaced. Whole- sale dis-placement may be inevitable; but we should not suppose that it occurs without disastrous consequences for the earth and for ourselves. People who root themselves in places are likelier to know and care for those places than are people who root themselves in ideas. When we cease to be migrants and become inhabitants, we might begin to pay enough heed and respect to where we are. By settling in, we have a chance of making a durable home for ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our descendants.

To become intimate with your home region, to know the territory as well as you can, to understand your life as woven into the local life does not prevent you from recognizing and honoring the diversity of other places, cultures, and ways. On the contrary, how can you value other places if you do not have one of your own? If you are not yourself placed, then you wander the world like a sightseer, a collector of sensa- tions, with no gauge for measuring what you see. Local knowledge is the grounding for global knowledge.

Writing Topic

According to Sanders, what are the benefits of “staying put”? Do

you agree with his viewpoint? To support your position, be sure to

use specific evidence taken from your own experiences,

observations, or readings