Richard Olmer

Yes, I listen to trees, to breezes, to rocks and waves and all sorts of things. I was trained to listen to people and to try to unwind the workings of their minds. How else can one teach if one cannot listen? A teacher must know where someone is before he or she can move them onward into new places.

And somewhere during my own education or through the magic of genes and dreams, an ancient grandmother and an uncle whose life was a series of alcoholic binges mixed with months of living alone in the woods, I learned about place. How place can define history, belief, well-being, sanity, reality and even wisdom.

You and I are defined by a series of places where we have lived, visited, dreamed of or simply imagined. Places where we have learned lessons, felt anxiety or fear or happiness, places we remember and places we have forgotten.

Why do we travel long distances to visit places at great costs if we do not hope

to gain something? Why do

we need to visit countries where our families have roots or the homes of famous people?

We know that place is important to who we are and who we can become.

Places can be wild or carefully tended and well-planned to the smallest detail.

The formal garden at the residence of a European king or queen, Jefferson's home Monticello, the city of Washington, D.C., all are carefully planned. A beach like Rialto, the top of most mountains and a mountain stream are wild and spontaneous without any conscious design.

A planned place can be quite comfortable and comforting or un-natural and cause discomfort.

A wild place can be frightening when unknown and

unsuspected or wonderful when expected and anticipated.

I find some gardens comforting; some too contrived and over-designed.

Each one of us prefers some places over others. Most of us cringe at the thought of visiting a dental office unless we have a toothache.

Most places are neither good or bad, pleasant or awful; we judge them based on expectations, experiences and our current state of mind.

Yet some places can change our state of mind.

P.D. James had her detective, Inspector Dalgliesh, say, "He could learn more about his witness from an unobtrusive scrutiny of his rooms than from a dozen direct questions. Books, pictures, the arrangement of artifacts sometimes provided more revealing testimony than words." The places we live in can tell a visitor a very lot about ourselves.

What about my favorite places in and out of Sequim?

There's the burnt forest up on Blue Mountain where the trees are white and bare.

There's Rialto Beach.

There's the top of Mount Townsend or the trail diving down to Grand and Moose lakes from Lillian Ridge.

There's Klahhane Ridge looking down at Lake Dawn, the Graywolf River or Lake Angeles.

In Sequim, there's Paul's warm smile at the Safeway pharmacy counter, Art's Barber Shop, the wonderful garden at Zbaraschuk's

Dental Center, the nice folks at the Co-op and those ladies who draw your blood in

Sequim early in the morning.

And, of course, there are folks you've hiked with.

Richard Olmer can be reached via e-mail at

columnists@sequim

gazette.com.