The excellent Oxford American magazine, which covers the South, has a new double issue exploring the theme of place. Contributions, as the editor, Eliza Borné, explains in her introduction, are “all rooted in various historic, and sometimes personal, events, yet united by connection to the four core elements” — soil, wood, water and stone. I particularly enjoyed one of the earliest pieces to go online, in which Holly Haworth writes of the places she and her dog have explored over the years: 

He was fox-red, his pelt vivid against the bare trees as we wound through them. He was a tug at my waist, pulling me down the path behind the old marble quarry, to the glinting river. I followed him deeper into the place I lived. He stopped often to put his nose to the ground, the burnished-gold leaf litter: traces of scent left by animals, made visible to me by the lines his nose drew across the earth. 

I set forth on foot following this tug of energy that urged my legs to walk. The circle of my life, small as it was, widened outward. 

  I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the issue.