Why does place matter?

After reading Dillard's "The Writing Life" she paints writing as a process undertaken only by the insane who like to inflict pain on themselves. With references to Zulu warriors and Aztec maiden rituals and even her own ritual of drinking "refried" coffee and smoking cigarettes in seclusion suggest writing as a holistic ritual of sorts. Dillard names a twenty foot conference table, her office, and being alone in a cabin as places where she has written. The blandness of the descriptions tell that there is not much for the eye, so the true inspiration must come from within.

At first, in "Writing From the Center" physical location is highly revered and treated as the spring board and initial muse for a good, inspired piece of writing. Through some discerning and overcoming a writer's identity crisis, Sanders comes to his senses and tells that physical place does not matter, but rather mentality or reaching into the depths of some internal place and drawing from there for inspiration.

Place matters because it inspires and sparks the initial thought that turns a few weak, like-minded sentences into an actual piece of writing. I'm not so sure that the physical location matters as much as the internal pool that you have to jump in in order to write well.