But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.
Gary Snyder, The Gary Snyder Reader, Volume 1: Prose, Poetry and Translations 1952-1998
gary-snyder, gossip, naturalism, nature, part, spirit-of-place, whole