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Journey in Place: A Field Guide to Belonging
Why not work on building the deepest relationship of your life?
That relationship is with your place.
◆◆◆
Maybe you feel out of place. Ungrounded. New to the suburbs, lost in the city, lonely in the rural.
Maybe you want to get outside more. Learn the names of birds.
Maybe you’re already in love with your place and you want to listen to trees. Hear the stars singing.
Whatever your situation, this book seeks to answer one major question, How to learn to be in place.
How to love our place. How to witness our place and have our place witness us.◆◆◆
Journey in Place contains 52 explorations.
Each includes
a tiny essay on some aspect of placea feet-on-the-ground exercisea writing prompthandouts and worksheetsan occasional recipe or photographa reading listencouragement to get outside.That's 52 ideas on how to belong to your place.
◆◆◆
Wondering how this book came to be?
One fall after the pandemic, I was giving a talk on a college campus when a young person in the front row raised their hand and asked a question I’d never been asked.
How do you learn to be in place?The student had been told daily that place doesn’t matter. We destroy places. We homogenize them. We focus on built environments, technology, and social interaction. The student sensed she was missing something. What would a place-based life look like? How does one learn to be in place?
Yes, I said, we are made of place. We are meant to experience living in a human body within a landscape, to deeply know Earth’s cycles, to live within those cycles. Placelessness shows up in us as a kind of homelessness.
The student’s question stayed with me, and I decided to do something.
◆◆◆
I created the book Journey in Place, a manual for♥ getting to know a place♥ falling in love with place♥ living well in place◆◆◆
Where you live does not matter.
Eighty percent of us live in highly populated cities and can attest to the presence of, and accessibility to, wildness. Vast amounts of life and evidence of native ecosystems can be found in cities. ln this book I make a directed effort to think about place differently, as the environment around us.
◆◆◆
Some folks who wish to journey in place experience mobility and other physical challenges. In many of these explorations, you are asked to get outside. If at all possible, do. A spot on a porch or deck or balcony is fine. If you can’t get outside, position yourself by an open window.
◆◆◆
I believe that we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of our understanding of place.I think that the place of our nativity never quits calling to us, as if we were homing pigeons. I believe we’re made of place, elementally, that it lives in our DNA. Sometimes I believe that our places choose us, not the other way around.
That relationship is with your place.
◆◆◆
Maybe you feel out of place. Ungrounded. New to the suburbs, lost in the city, lonely in the rural.
Maybe you want to get outside more. Learn the names of birds.
Maybe you’re already in love with your place and you want to listen to trees. Hear the stars singing.
Whatever your situation, this book seeks to answer one major question, How to learn to be in place.
How to love our place. How to witness our place and have our place witness us.◆◆◆
Journey in Place contains 52 explorations.
Each includes
a tiny essay on some aspect of placea feet-on-the-ground exercisea writing prompthandouts and worksheetsan occasional recipe or photographa reading listencouragement to get outside.That's 52 ideas on how to belong to your place.
◆◆◆
Wondering how this book came to be?
One fall after the pandemic, I was giving a talk on a college campus when a young person in the front row raised their hand and asked a question I’d never been asked.
How do you learn to be in place?The student had been told daily that place doesn’t matter. We destroy places. We homogenize them. We focus on built environments, technology, and social interaction. The student sensed she was missing something. What would a place-based life look like? How does one learn to be in place?
Yes, I said, we are made of place. We are meant to experience living in a human body within a landscape, to deeply know Earth’s cycles, to live within those cycles. Placelessness shows up in us as a kind of homelessness.
The student’s question stayed with me, and I decided to do something.
◆◆◆
I created the book Journey in Place, a manual for♥ getting to know a place♥ falling in love with place♥ living well in place◆◆◆
Where you live does not matter.
Eighty percent of us live in highly populated cities and can attest to the presence of, and accessibility to, wildness. Vast amounts of life and evidence of native ecosystems can be found in cities. ln this book I make a directed effort to think about place differently, as the environment around us.
◆◆◆
Some folks who wish to journey in place experience mobility and other physical challenges. In many of these explorations, you are asked to get outside. If at all possible, do. A spot on a porch or deck or balcony is fine. If you can’t get outside, position yourself by an open window.
◆◆◆
I believe that we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of our understanding of place.I think that the place of our nativity never quits calling to us, as if we were homing pigeons. I believe we’re made of place, elementally, that it lives in our DNA. Sometimes I believe that our places choose us, not the other way around.
256 pages, Paperback
Published December 11, 2025
About the author
Janisse Ray
44 books283 followersis an award-winning and beloved American writer. Her work encourages wild, place-centric, sustainable lives and often calls attention to heart-breaking degradations of the natural world.
She writes the popular Substack TRACKLESS WILD, tracklesswild.substack.com.
Her newsletter for writers is SPIRAL-BOUND, janisseray.substack.com.
She is a sought-after and highly praised teacher of writing. She leads both in-person and online writing workshops, including a summer memoir course online, WRITE YOUR OWN STORY.
You can find more information about workshops and courses at her website.
https://janisseray.com/product-catego...
Check out her book CRAFT & CURRENT: A MANUAL FOR MAGICAL WRITING.
Janisse has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Bookseller Award, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, Nautilus Award, and Eisenberg Award, among many others.
Her collection of essays, WILD SPECTACLE, won the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence.
Her books have been translated into Turkish, French, and Italian.
Janisse's first book, ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD, recounts her experiences growing up in a junkyard, the daughter of a poor, white, fundamentalist Christian family. The book interweaves family history and memoir with natural history—specifically, descriptions of the ecology of the vanishing longleaf pine forests that once blanketed the Southern coastal plains.
ECOLOGY was followed by many other books, mostly creative nonfiction--often nature writing-- as well as poetry and fiction.
She earned an MFA from the University of Montana, has received two honorary doctorates, and was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Writer's Association.
She lives on an organic farm inland from Savannah, Georgia, where she enjoys wildflowers, dark chocolate, and the blues.
She writes the popular Substack TRACKLESS WILD, tracklesswild.substack.com.
Her newsletter for writers is SPIRAL-BOUND, janisseray.substack.com.
She is a sought-after and highly praised teacher of writing. She leads both in-person and online writing workshops, including a summer memoir course online, WRITE YOUR OWN STORY.
You can find more information about workshops and courses at her website.
https://janisseray.com/product-catego...
Check out her book CRAFT & CURRENT: A MANUAL FOR MAGICAL WRITING.
Janisse has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Bookseller Award, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, Nautilus Award, and Eisenberg Award, among many others.
Her collection of essays, WILD SPECTACLE, won the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence.
Her books have been translated into Turkish, French, and Italian.
Janisse's first book, ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD, recounts her experiences growing up in a junkyard, the daughter of a poor, white, fundamentalist Christian family. The book interweaves family history and memoir with natural history—specifically, descriptions of the ecology of the vanishing longleaf pine forests that once blanketed the Southern coastal plains.
ECOLOGY was followed by many other books, mostly creative nonfiction--often nature writing-- as well as poetry and fiction.
She earned an MFA from the University of Montana, has received two honorary doctorates, and was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Writer's Association.
She lives on an organic farm inland from Savannah, Georgia, where she enjoys wildflowers, dark chocolate, and the blues.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 5, 2026
An exceptional book that will take you on a pilgrimage of thorough and authentic discovery.
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