Solastalgia

As our global environment changes, so will our local environments. This can cause a profound sense of loss that Glenn Albrecht has termed solastalgia, “a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’” The latest issue of Wired has a nice article by Clive Thompson on the topic. Our sense of place may be largely unexamined or even unacknowledged, but disruptions to that sense of place can still hurt.

One of my favorite books in the world is From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place, by Deborah Tall. I read her book shortly before leaving Ithaca, and it helped me realize how thoroughly I had connected to the local environment: the hills, the lake, the parks and waterfalls, the deer and ducks and seasonal rhythms had become a part of me, and I still miss them. My sense of Boston is much more fragmented, despite living here for much longer. Perhaps it’s because Boston is more urban, or because Boston is larger, or because I no longer have the time or vantage point to go eat lunch while staring at the lake several times a week. Perhaps we connect differently to places at different ages, or perhaps the difference is simply that I still live in Boston.

Clive Thompson claims that how deeply we are affected by losing our sense of place is related to whether we have chosen the change. Can we therefore inoculate ourselves against solastalgia by more actively claiming personal responsibility for the local effects of global climate change? Can vacations to warmer climes make the increase in tropical gardening in New England function as a pleasant souvenir that compensates for the loss of our local flora? Or in 10 years, will post-winter-solstice December rain like tonight’s mean popping another pill to ward off the memories of a time when such a rain would have been helping to melt the previous week’s accumulated snow and ice?