I have this thing about body memory.  I think it’s a truth for things like sports or other activities one may have done with repetition.  Recently I knit something for the first time in a couple of years, and while part of the process was brain-memory (or recall, if you prefer)  part of it was that sensation of my fingers and hands knowing just what to do, without thinking or calling up the motions.

Animals, some of them, know their babies by smell.  I think we humans know them by how they fit into our arms (even my 6’3″ baby). Parts of my body record memories too. A particular pain, muscle cramp or echo of an ache will evoke different memories if centred in my chest or my ear or my ankle or leg or toe. For example.

But lately I discover I have geographic memories that are just as strong. Once in awhile I drive past a place where I received a kiss I desperately wanted, but I frequently drive past a place where I got a phone call I very much didn’t want. Those two memories are forever anchored to that stretch of beach or vacant lot. Coming across a particular crosswalk where a friend once told me something riotously funny years ago still makes me smile today, even though I have retraced those steps hundreds of times since.

It is tied, I believe, to our sense of “connection to the land”.  I used to think that was the province of farmers and hunters (and possibly gatherers). But no, a stretch of a path I have walked before is marked with the thoughts or conversations I had there. Much like how certain smells trigger memories (so, obviously, along with physical and geographic centres of memory, there is also an olfactory one), a particular view out a window or texture of a rocky beach under my feet calls up my own connections to that place in another time.

The blessing and the curse of living in a small town–driving past a new development that has sprung up downtown, I realised that while it’s only 3 or 4 floors, it has changed the skyline, changed the view I have known at that corner for a few decades. Any memories I had anchored to that spot may now also be disrupted, jackhammered, concreted over, covered with foundation, walls, glass, roof.

If I were to move away, or to change my personal traffic patterns, would my recall of those memories become harder, would they be pushed out?

Waiting for a float plane