Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place

“Country Road take me home
to the place
I belong…”
Emotionally laden eulogy on the meaning of place rings through much modern poetry and song. Nostalgia for some real or imagined state of harmony and centeredness once experienced in rural settings haunts the victim of mobile and fragmented urban milieu. Like many a fortune seeker amidst the lights of Broadway who longed for the simple cottage near the rippling stream back home I suppose one could say: “you never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. Patriotic songs about native soil and forest that built the spirit of nationhood in many of our countries were often written in the cities of North America and Australia. And today, as the uniqueness of places becomes more and more threatened by the homogenizing veneer of commercialism and standardized-component architecture, many long for their hembygd and smultronställe.