What is "sense of place"?
I've just begun an intensive period of PhD work, so my posts here will be less frequent in the coming year. I'd like to share a short piece I wrote in one of my first courses, Ecological Thought. This piece is a reflection on several readings on ecological identity, and you're invited to reflect and share your own thoughts. What is "sense of place?" 'Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion and appearance... till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality...'" Henry David Thoreau, Walden A sense of place is a complex mixture of sensory stimuli, memories, impressions, and stories which build a deep and lasting connection between person and landscape. To have a sense of place means to have directly and intimate experience with it, and to make meaning of that experience through reflection, comparison, appreciation, or s...