You think you own whatever land you land on

The Concept of Place in Environmental Ethics by Sagoff caused me to question what I personally consider a "place" to be. Sagoff utilizes Alam Gussow's definition of place to support his argument: "A place is a piece of the whole environment that has been claimed by feelings." In class, Onno said that we will live here for months but the Adirondacks will never be a "place" for us. This was hard for me to grasp, not because I feel robbed of an ability to have my own "place" here but because I found the transition to when a space becomes a place confusing. Who is to say that a space cannot become a place for you within a matter of years, days, minutes, seconds?

Most of my life, I have continually moved from space to space. This was due to job changes, mother's fickle opinions about neighbourhoods and school districts, and an array of reasons I will probably never know.  According to Sagoff and our discussion in class, I do not and never have had a "place."  Sagoff would most likely account American culture for my lack of roots but I am not sure if I am lacking roots at all. I feel very emotionally connected to many spaces in this country and I feel like they are a place for me. What is not clear is if they can be considered a place for me because I have not lived in these spaces long enough. But how can one ever know when it is "long enough"?

Sagoff's definition of place says that a place is a place due to emotional attachment. How could a space not have value, how does it not become a "place," until a human considers its value? This idea was proposed by Annie during class and we eventually said that an elephant can also consider a space a place. This too seemed backward because we still needed a large organism to denote value onto a space. I feel Sagoff's points were important and factual, but it still felt wrong to place value on land simply because someone felt it should have value.

Here is a song that should help you understand where I'm coming from: