The psychology of place begins with an understanding that places are more than mathematical coordinates or Cartesian res extensa. Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the experience of space shows that the body opens onto a world composed of significations, and that lived space is more primary and foundational than the conceptual space of geometry. The phenomenology of place aims for this lived, pre-logical, wild dimension of spatial experience. The following essay will give a brief philosophical introduction into the relationship between consciousness, nature, and place, lay out the basic structure of the Husserlian phenomenological method as a tool for reading places, compare it to Goethean phenomenology, and demonstrate the stepwise application of phenomenology to the study of the nature places in an elementary school yard.