This week I wrote about running in an abstract kind of way. Sometimes I go on a run and there’s something about running itself I want to write about — like bettering my times, training, or — in last week’s case — preparing for running. When starting this newsletter, I wanted to also write this kind of stuff — a little more creative, a little more personal essay. I hope to look back on all of this writing once I’ve run the marathon and see the breadth of experiences and thoughts I’ve had all through training.
While in grad school for environmental writing, my writing professors emphasized place-based writing. We were also encouraged to take a class outside of our program, so I took a course called “Literature and the Environment: Changes in the Land.” I found it to be one of the most interesting classes I took because I enjoyed the more “theoretical” nature of it as we looked at the idea of “landscape” and “land use.”
When I’m running, I think about these things.
All of the books we read in that class had something to do with how land changes over time. I was most interested in the development of suburbia, how dense cities morphed into sprawling neighborhoods and then, eventually, into countryside.
Charleston is bound by water on most sides; the geography of the city bends to the will of where the water might go. No matter where I run, I’m running past water that has been built around and accommodated for. Landscape and landscaping is not just how the front yard looks or the maintenance of the shrubbery at my neighborhood’s entrance. It’s also the deliberate building and planning of this land, shaping it so it is optimized for human use.
Since I often run the same route, I watch how the tides change the landscape — and it happens everyday. A low tide exposes the pluff mud and the distinct Charleston marsh smell. When I first moved here, I thought Charleston always smelled like sewage, but it’s the mud. Now I can tell the difference. The shore birds come, sticking their beaks in the mud, looking for what the water has exposed. It’s not beautiful in the same way as when the tide is high and the marsh is full of water, creatures milling about on the edge of the water contemplating a swim or looking for food. And then I run past the serenity of water, of nature, and spend miles and miles making my way through cul-de-sacs and along roads lined with houses.
This is a landscape, too.
Sometimes I find it difficult to appreciate suburbia as a landscape. It’s not particularly beautiful. Many of the houses look the same and, in Charleston, nearly everyone has a palmetto tree in their front yard. For the most part, the landscaping of these houses is similar, too. If I looked at James Island from above, I would see a lot of grass, some green, some brown in the summer heat. But it’s grass and palmetto trees and shrubs.
I don’t often run with earbuds in; they make my ears hurt and the noise gets rather annoying after the first hour of running. As my mileage creeps up, I thought the landscape would become monotonous. The pattern of brick, siding, brick, siding, brick, siding would drone on, as if a boring lecture. Sometimes it does feel like a boring lecture, and then I remember “place-based writing.”
In Montana, place-based writing felt natural. I’d look out on the horizon and see mountains for miles and miles. Hiking trails through the mountainside forests were not even a mile from my apartment. Nature, and thus “place,” was all around me and easy to access.
When I was taking this class on representations of changes in the land in literature, it was the first time I considered suburbia to be a place in the same way that “nature” is a place. I don’t know if James Island counts as suburbia — especially because Charleston is not a conventional city in appearance — but it does feel that way. I live in Charleston’s sprawl.
James Island wasn’t always part of Charleston proper — and still, not all of it is. The part I live on was annexed by a mayor in the late 20th century. I notice this when I’m running, too, and see the buildings for Charleston Public Services and James Island Public Services not too far from one another.
Being on foot makes the idea of “place” more expansive. I’m more connected to the roads I’m running on and the water I see. I love the stream just steps outside my front door and the house with the veggie garden in the front yard. The minutiae of it all gives character to the place.
When I started writing this entry, I looked through some of my materials from Literature & the Environment: Changes in the Land, and in many of my reflections I wrote about the Atlanta suburb where I used to live. Similar to James Island, it’s a suburb and it’s not a suburb, the town itself a hybrid between a small Southern town and the sprawling suburb it continues to become. Each time I go to visit my parents, the landscape has changed once again — with new homes, new restaurants, and new Interstate highway exits.
Changes in landscape can be big or small. New apartment complexes and a new shrub in someone’s front yard are both changes, the scale of which depends on how you define change.
Starting this month, most of my long runs will take place off James Island; I’ll have new landscapes to explore, new places to watch for the changes that happen between weeks, months, and seasons.
Both the landscape and I will continue to change, one run at a time.
Upcoming Event!
On Sunday, August 4, I’ll be taking part in Charleston Zine Fest! I’ll have Peregrine Coast Press leftovers, my zine Death Wish, and a print version of the May & June issues of Running on Sentences, stuffed with some extra writing!
If you have kindly decided to support my writing endeavors by being a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a copy of the print version as a thank you.