More maudlin veneration of the land

Another quote, this time from Mary Morris' Wall to Wall (excerpted in Home Ground):

All my life I had imagined this terrain, a country as much within me as without, a landscape that seemed almost of my own making. I could not look at this land and not think about its history. And I could not think of its history without thinking of my own. We crossed frozen ground, ice-trimmed lakes. Peering through the open shade, I saw a world outside that seemed no different from the one I carried within. Cold, hungry, empty, and vast.

I think she was writing about a railroad trip through Russia, but I can't read that without thinking of Ontario.