This Land is Your Land

 This land is my land . . . . .

And when traveling to South Dakota, as I have done many many times over the last 70 years or so it certainly did seem that this wind-swept prairie was my land. Especially after another recent community gathering put together by hundreds of volunteers from the community including many of my family still living here.

This year we had gathered to celebrate Schmeckfest - literally a "tasting festival" - a yearly event to raise funds for the Freeman Academy/Junior College where many of our clan had attended, graduated, taught. This year it was a bittersweet celebration as it was - in all likelihood - going to be the last Schmeckfest. Declining enrollment, necessary increases in tuition, and competition with the local public schools, had forced the closing of the school.

But in the past we would go visit our cousins, city kids pretending to belong - if only for a little while - on the farm.  We continued affirming that notion of belonging as we reconnected with family still living on the land. And affirming that connection just as strongly, if not moreso, when visiting the cemetery in Freeman, SD, paying our respects to people literally in the land. My grandparents are buried there:

And a tree is dedicated to my parents in a nearby arboretum:

And furthermore to honor the more than 100 other Schrags are listed in the cemetery directory.

So in a very real way this is my land.

But Woody Guthrie went on to say "From California to the New York Island." And as I looked around me at the various Schrags who had gathered for this event I realized that this line was more descriptive of the current state of our family. We currently reside in all corners of America - Northwest, Southwest, Northeast, Southeast, and in the Midlands.

Maybe this, in part, explains why I, strangely, no longer feel "at home" in the places that used to "be home," used to "feel like home" to me. The memories are still there. I still feel a pull in my heart when I stand in the spaces that crafted those memories. But nowhere really feels like home. Now, before you say "how terrible!" Let me clarify.

It is no longer the land that defines home for me - it is the people in and on and somewhere about the land that shapes my definition of home. Maybe it was in the 1800s and 1900s when people "stayed put" that home and place became intertwined.  Moving "to town" or "to the city" became issues of significance because you were leaving "the land" breaking ties with kith and kin.

In this millennium we carry our family around in our purses and pockets. That outsized anxiety we feel when we misplace our phone or tablet is not the fear of losing a chunk of silicon and plastic - it is the fear of losing touch with family, with friends, with work mates - a fear of being alone in the world. 

These digital connections - these surrogates for a physical home - are strange and complex entities. There is certainly comfort in the avatars of loved ones that snuggle inside our technology. They allow for those quasi-personal interactions that often get stretched and fragmented when we gather "for real" in treasured celebrations, reunions, and holidays. But the avatars are not "real." The glance, the touch, the hug, the fleeting expression - a smile, a frown - are at risk. And digital interactions are "glitchy." These Wall posts go out to you as anonymous posts. You never know who else is "on The Wall." And I never know who reads the posts unless you comment. I structure The Wall that way because it is not my prerogative to intrude.

Maybe Virtual Reality will eventually do a bit to restore the commonality of land and place to the notion of "This land is your land." Goggles on everyone!

But for now I think I will stick with the idea of a family across "the land" digitally linked by caring, community and love. Linked strangely by the cellphones and tablets in our hands - that land is our land.