In Summer 2018, I set out to find the feel of the places I have long studied as a historian, resulting in an expansion of my research process and ‘archive’. This article introduces and reflects on key moments and ideas from this research journey through historic strongholds of Finnish settlement in the U.S. Midwest. I discuss how following community leads and engaging with local knowledge-carriers made clear that my search for the past was intimately entangled with the present realities and future implications of demographic and economic change. I reflect on moments of being in place that allowed me to think through the inter-workings of historical memory and sensory imagination. This resulted in the integration of a photographic practice that serves as both a source and a tool for (re-)articulating feelings of particular moments in the field. I conclude by analyzing the fluid and multiple processes at play in the creation of research and archives. As a whole, this exploration aims to further embolden qualitative researchers to engage in sensitive research that makes space for feeling – both through emotions and senses – the productive and powerful pulls of time and place operating within our sites of research.