b'After visiting the United States in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, in a chapter titled Why Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity:In the United States, a man carefully builds a dwelling in which to pass his declining years, and he sells it while the roof is being laid; he plants a garden and he rents it out just as he was going to taste its fruits; he clears a field and he leaves to others the care of harvesting its crops. He embraces a profession and quits it. He settles in a place from which he departs soon after so as to take his changing desires elsewhere. Should his private affairs give him some respite, he immediately plunges into the whirlwind of politics. And when toward the end of a year filled with work some leisure still remains to him, he carries his restive curiosity here and there within the vast limits of the United States. He will thus go five hundred leagues in a few days in order better to distract himself from his happiness. 6Putting down roots has never been an American strong point. Today, we move, on average, 11 times during our lifetimes. Most of us have families who have come here in the not-too-distant past. The siren call of Moving On seems more real to us than the poetic strains of Staying Put. 7Our attention and our money seem destined to flow elsewhere, making us all the more susceptible to the abstractions of the Dow, the seductions of cyberspace and the titillations of the Twitterverse. 6 Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1945), p. 136 [First American edition published in 1840] 7 Gary Snyder writes, Living in a placethe notion has been around for decades and has usually been dismissed as provincial, backward, dull, and possibly reactionary. But new dynamics are at work. . .Good minds, which are often forced by company or agency policy to keep moving, will make notable contributions to the neighborhood if allowed to stay put. And since local elections deal with immediate issues, a lot more people will turn out to vote. There will be a return to civic life. From the essay Coming into the Watershed, A Place in Space (Counterpoint, 1995) pp. 231-232. Since the preceding are not poetic strains, lets add: Kites come down the mountainsAnd glide quavering over the rooftops; and frost melts in the sun.A low haze hangs on the houses firewood smoke and mistSlanting far to the Kamo river and the distant Uji hills.Farmwomen lead down carts loaded with white radish;I pack my bike with books all roads descend toward town.(from Snyders Work to Do Toward Town, in The Back Country)55'