This book is concerned not with the history of nature and the landscape but with the historical narrative as it is written in the landscape or place by the people who lived there.
The intersection of nature, culture, history, and ideology form the ground on which we stand – our land, our place, the local. The lure of the local is the pull of place that operates on each of us, exposing our politics and spiritual legacies. It is the geographical component of the psychological need to belong somewhere, one antidote to a prevailing alienation. The lure of the local is that undertone to modern life that connects it to the past we know so little and future we aimlessly dream up. It is not universal (nothing is) and its character and affect differ greatly over time from person to person and from community to community … These days the notion of the local is attractive to many who have never really experienced it, who may or may not study the local knowledge that distinguish every place from every other place. …
Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a persons life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there.
