In search of our Shire

finding beauty in every place we've lived

Fishing Cove, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia. Photo credit: NovaScotia.com

Tony Gilsmith, a fellow church member in Statesboro, Georgia used to camp around the region a good bit. One time a stranger came up to him and said, “Isn’t it beautiful here?” Tony nodded in agreement, but later told me what he wanted to say: “Are you kidding? It’s nothing but sand and pine trees! Have you never seen a mountain?”

Statesboro had many charms, including Tony and the congregation there, but, to me, geographical beauty was not one of them. Flat cotton fields with the occasional dark pond was not my idea of beauty. Sometimes when driving down the highway I would squint my eyes and pretend that the clouds were mountains. It kinda worked, too. Nearby Richmond Hill, where we had lived earlier, was not any better - nothing but marshes interlaced with a few roads and the occasional fishing hut. It was only given its name because Henry Ford, who had a house there, said it should be. The only thing “hill” about it was that it was above sea level - and barely at that. Still, I loved the history that haunted the marshy coast that men had somehow carved out as a place to live. It was also the first place where Kirstan and I lived together. That is its own kind of beauty, one that cannot be measured by lines on a map.

Blacksburg is beautiful in its own way. I love that I pass both cows and Starbucks on the way to church. I don’t love that old farmhouses are being torn down to make way for boxy apartment complexes. But places change. When we first moved here, there was an all-glass circular travel agency on South Main. It’s long gone now, but honestly, so are travel agencies. Times and places change. We have mountains here, but no beach. Tubing down the New River is lovely. Still, it’s not the same as a good, long beach. But the people? Just come to a contra dance and see. See them swirl around in their colorful outfits, stomping their feet and laughing out loud at each misstep. Unrivaled.

Cincinnati was not quite what I would call beautiful, but it was interesting and quirky, trying to hold onto its turn-of-the-century charm as neighborhoods alternatively decayed and were revitalized in checkerboard fashion. It was the kind of place where every turn could grab one’s attention, a geography of Brutalist concrete and Art Nouveau crammed together, a mixture of motion and mustiness all at once, if such a thing is possible. There is a kind of beauty to that, too, that kind of spackled resiliance.

Without question the most beautiful place we have ever lived was Cape Ann, Massachusetts, first in Pigeon Cove near Rockport, and then later in the Magnolia neighborhood of Gloucester. I still regularly visit both places on Google Street View just to remember all the eccentric, stunning nooks and crannies. Things like swimming pools carved into the rocky shore beneath abandoned mansions, and the deep quarries dug into the hills of Dogtown. We moved to Cape Ann after our marriage had endured the swamps of Georgia and the deserts of Saudi Arabia, and it appeared to us like a fairy land, a place of summer greenery and winter healing.

I could write another dozen essays about the beauty of that place to us. Halibut Point State Park with the weird gnome statue. Coolidge Point with the fire hydrant in the middle of a grass field for no apparent reason. The one room Story Library in Pigeon Cove is closed now, but the abandoned tool company warehouse is still there, abandoned. In the summer, I used to swim some in Magnolia Harbor, being careful to avoid that one rock hidden by the tide. Above all, Lanesville Congregational Church became a place of health and healing for us. That was its own kind of beauty. That was its own kind of love.

Of course, we have visited other places of beauty, places of water and mountains, places with stunning views and haunting histories. On our honeymoon in Nova Scotia, we hiked to an abandoned fishing village on Cape Breton. It was in a deep cove next to the ocean, accessible only by sea and the narrow trail we hiked. Nothing was left but the stone foundations of the huts. Years later we hiked in Shenandoah National Park beside rippling streams so deep down in the valleys that the sky was only a narrow sliver above between towering old growth trees. Perfect peace. We sometimes pressed our luck to hike as much as we could and still get back to our car before dark. We always made it back, if just barely sometimes. But we made it back together.

Later, we traveled to Europe with our girls and no place was more beautiful than Switzerland. We had promised Geneva that we would take her to the city of her namesake, and I am glad we did not name her Tuscaloosa or Lubbock. I loved driving around Lake Geneva to Château de Chillon, which jutted out into the lake. The bright blue water reflected the rainbowed hang gliders soaring beneath the snow-capped mountains. On balance, I doubt that there is a more beautiful country in the world than Switzerland, a swirl of mountains, water and peace for centuries. I am glad that we experienced its beauty together, a memory to cherish for a lifetime.

Geographical places are more or less beautiful. Some people love the desert. Some people love the plains. Some people love pine trees and sand. I love hills and water, side by side. That is my shire. But there is no shire without the people we love. That is a beauty that no mountain, no stream, no beach can match.

So maybe that camper who told Tony that the flat land and pine trees was beautiful had good reason. Maybe he looked around in awe, holding his wife's hand, or next to his best friend. Maybe the citizens of Tuscaloosa, Alabama or Lubbock, Texas think that their cities are the most beautiful on earth. And, you know what, if said next to the people they love, they would not be wrong.

I can’t travel much anymore. My sightseeing days are largely over. But I can still share my life with the people I love as best I can. That is its own kind of beauty, a beauty which runs deeper than any memory, a beauty which lasts longer than the very mountains themselves. That is a shire worth seeking.