From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place

Why does a particular landscape move us? What is it that attaches us to a particular place? Deborah Tall's From Where We Stand is an eloquent exploration of the connections we have with places--and the loss to us if there are no such connections. A typically rootless child of several American suburbs, haunted as an adult by the need to belong to an authentic place, Deborah Tall set out to make a true home for herself in the landscape to which circumstance had brought her--the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. In a mosaic of personal anecdotes, historical sketches, and lyrical meditations, she interweaves her own story with the story of this place and its people--from the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois, to European settlers, to the many utopians who sensed a spiritual resonance here and were inspired.