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While teaching at the university, I knew a colleague who had a saying: “We see what we <br />know.” By this he meant that we are able to truly see and appreciate something only <br />when we have a deeper understanding of it. With this in mind, I think I am more able <br />now to know my place because I regard it with an enhanced understanding. And in <br />knowing my place, in the words of Scott Russell Sanders, I also aspire to “dwell there <br />with a full heart.” <br />Long before my colleague came up with his saying about the relationship between seeing <br />and knowing, writer Aldo Leopold offered another idea linking the grieving of <br />something with our truly knowing it. With this in mind, I think I am more able to know <br />my place because I do grieve it. I grieve the ecological death spiral of our lake—the one <br />we have thus far chosen to call Savage—and I grieve its outdated and disrespectful <br />name. I grieve the continuing ecological struggles of other lakes and streams within my <br />watershed as well. And as long I am grieving, I will not be able to dwell in my place with <br />a full heart. But there is another possibility in which I dwell. There is hope. <br /> <br />Savage Lake and Interstate 35E – 2010 <br />This essay was written by Steve Robert Simmons in 2010. All rights <br />reserved. <br />