There are many kinds of nodes which will be discussed in more detail below. Places are a more general kind of node and healthy rural communities recognize a wide variety of places that are visited or used from time to time in the life pattern of the community. Places are less structurally significant in rural life although they typically are more numerous than the nodes which are associated with the intersections of trails and roads. Places are more occasional where nodes are typically sustained in usage. Nodes tend to be associated with the economic and organizational structure of the rural area while places are often associated with the recreational and social life or with the common local lore of naming the convenient reference points of the landscape.
Cycles are the large and small, long and short, repetitive aspects of rural life.
Cycles also include the many social functions and rituals that overlay the natural cycles of rural life. Revivals in rural churches were originally timed to coincide with the slack times between planting and harvest. Although a typical misconception of rural life is of an extensive area of farms, rural life requires more than farms for its efficacy. Scattered across any rural landscape will also be found the necessary support functions for the agriculture or other locally dominant occupation such as fishing, lumbering, or mining. Lesser nodes include occupational places such as quarries, mines, furnaces, hatcheries, slaughter pens.