"The principal organizing system is chronology, which is not in itself history but the scaffold upon which one constructs history. . . . [A]ny historical view clearly implies a belief that the past has fundamental significance, one aspect of which is so pervasive as to be easily overlooked: the powerful fact that life must be lived amidst that which was made before. . . . The past endures . . . ."
-D.W. Meinig, "The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene," in D.W. Meinig, ed., The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays at 43 (1979).