William Pattison's seminal 1964 article outlining geography's four core traditions provided an informative overview of distinct strands of research and teaching in geography. His article enhanced appreciation of the discipline's intellectual diversity, but it did not address why the identified traditions should be grouped together under a single disciplinary umbrella. The concern of a broad range of geographers with spatial relationships, place characterization, and geographical context provides a crosscutting rationale for such a grouping. Emphasizing these crosscutting themes along with Pattison's four traditions (in updated form) can enhance efforts to communicate geography's essence to students and to the wider public.