Begin, though, not with a continent or a country or a house, but with the geography closest in—the body. Theory—the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees—theory can be a dew that rises from the earth and collects in the rain cloud and returns to earth over and over. But if it doesn’t smell of the earth, it isn’t good for the earth.

Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry, in Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art