Four Reasons Place is Important

We are a species for whom place has been vital.

1. We are made of places, literally—bone and sinew.
2. We are different depending on the place we are from. As Wallace Stegner famously said, “Tell me where you’re from and I’ll tell you who you are.” Or, “I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from. I’ve got an exaggerated sense of place . . . my personal experiences are all I surely know, and those experiences are very likely to be rooted in places.”
3. We are place-bound (not really place-haunted.) Even as nomads we were relating nonstop to the places we found ourselves. And most nomadism was simply a cycling through a finite number of places. 
4. Most of our sensual bodies—most of the stimuli coming into our sensual bodies—is the product of place. Place, even in the largest cities, is acting on us and in us constantly. 

Yet, these days, we can live lives that pretend that place means nothing. We are global. Our needs are met in a global way. The internet is a potent symbol of the globe that is our backyard, our back forty, our back fields.