What is Landscape?
I prefer to begin my stories in the middle, this way it gives me latitude to meander forward in the story through the “exciting parts” and fill in what details I need as I need them. This tends to make every tale I tell considerably longer than it would otherwise have to be, but isn’t that the purpose of a story, to pass the time?
I look at definitional matters such trying to define landscape the same way, and to this end I start with a photo of an element, or portion of a landscape. Not because the photo is the landscape, or that it contains the definitional element that I associate with what a landscape is. But more because of the fact that the image, and its relation to a number of others I have taken from the same physical space throughout my time as an amateur photographer can act as Tuan describes as an ordering of reality from different angles.
This particular picture is a) of my dog, who has been a constant companion on nearly every outing I’ve made in the last six years and as such has been a vehicle for me to view what has become vernacular for me from a different perspective, but that is one of those side little details that I’m filling in, but more importantly b) this image is of the landscape, in the broader, vertical view, of a considerable portion of Southeast Ohio, otherwise regarded around this place as my home, which is another useless detail in a story in which I intend to define what Landscape is or is not.
Back to the photo, for me this is a very common sight, a common occurrence, even from the addition of Loki, part of what is a vernacular place or landscape for me. Though I grew up a few miles from where I was sitting in 2006 when I gathered the photo, I had in fact been venturing into those Eastern Hemlock forests for the better part of my entire life, and the specific spot where I had knelt to capture the reaction to my dog first hearing the specific and unique sound that the ice makes as it breaks from the top of the cliff line at the top of the adjoining gully as winter attempts to give way to spring late into March in this part of the state, was not new to me. But as Tuan describes, it takes time for children to develop the complex image or description of what is or isn’t a landscape; the fact that I instinctively knew exactly what that fierce, cracking sound was and dismissed it almost as quickly made for a chuckle for me when I knelt down to capture the intensity with which my baby girl crooned over the edge of the cliff –line to inspect the brand new sound. In hindsight, I vertically had conceptualized the landscape at that moment of time, but my dog was experiencing from a side view for the first time.
The specific element or locale here is twenty feet off of the main trail, part of the Buckeye Trail that circumvents the entire state, but all the same many people don’t venture away from the cliff band and look out over this gully. It isn’t entirely picturesque, which again follows with Tuan’s argument that people’s perceptions tend to develop lives of their own, and drive what they envision as the landscape of this particular portion of the state. The road is particularly winding, even by Southeast Ohio standards, and is bordered here by a operation that offers trail rides through the park, a small community church, a pole barn for the farmer that grows wheat and soybeans most years on the lands north of the State Forest, and maintenance buildings for the State Park just south of where I sit in the picture, so not too many people actually make their way back to where I sit, something about hiking past the manure pile from the stables making the part of the trailhead difficult to access. But this gully, and the hallow that it opens up into, to me, is indicative of the region as a whole. I use region not in the political, geographical or even ecological (vertical) sense of the term, but more towards the cultural construct of this portion of Southeast Ohio, and it’s relationship to Appalachia and the political economy of the region, as a greater entity.
“PLACE”
This spot is the image I draw in my mind when I think of Landscape; I know I essentially said that this image had NONE of the elements that I would practically require to make a landscape image. As importantly this is the image that comes to mind when someone mentions either Southeast Ohio, or Appalachia. From this spot I can see an open space, open in the Great Lakes, Midwest, Northeast sense of the word open, that is rather complicated to access, that from the outside appears unwelcoming and harsh, but the beauty lies much deeper than postcard depth, and much of this can be attributed, again the same way that Tuan describes the way that the Industrial Revolution tipped the balance of power between nature and man, as the rich in Brittan efforted to exploit the tenant farmers and laborers, the Scotch –Irish emigrated to what is now parts of Appalachia, bringing their ‘strict’ distrust of outsiders with them, and instilling it on an entire region. But as I diverge here into a tangent about, why this picture, and its depicted landscape is an iconic depiction of a landscape, I haven’t even begun to define the term Landscape itself.
Every author, every geographer, every artist, in fact everyone has a definition for landscape. I had the opportunity to hear the brains on College Gameday refer to the “Landscape of College Football” while waiting to watch a game over the weekend, and at the same time I am writing this piece for a seminar within a University that is attempting to brand itself as the “New Landscape for Learning”. So the concept of a definitive definition seems almost humorous, given that everyone will ALWAYS maintain an independent perception of, or depiction of reality. All the same, in the context of trying to identifying a particular geographic extent by which to describe spatial phenomena, putting a definition to what we are attempting to the word would be good for the general discourse.
TIME
Back to the image above, in March with four inches of snow and a veneer of veriglass ice on all rock surfaces, the hike to my perch takes around half an hour. In early December before the winter truly reaches into this hallow, as in the image below, the hike takes ten minutes. So holding place constant for a case study on the definition of a landscape, time has play an important factor in the definition. Every place, every subject changes as time passes. This is as true for this particular place in the Hocking State Forest as it is for Lower Manhattan, as it is for the landscape of College Football.
Time changes perception, just as the sixth graders that Tuan references identified more, or different elements from the images they were shown different from the same images shown to first graders; the nine months between Loki’s first encounter with the spring thaw in Hocking State Forest and my first trip as an actual climbing guide for the same hillside changed my perception of the spot from a place where I grew up, to the landscape of my refuge.
PURPOSE
The above image is from the end of a day climbing. For a while I trained with a fairly large group of people who were beginning to develop an interest in not having to travel quite so far to enjoy climbing outside on real rock, and “My season” for climbing really only starts later in the fall when the temperatures are cool enough to allow the body to maintain a particular level of activity without developing a lot of sweat, dealing with a large number of bugs, or large crowds, generally speaking means that I am gearing up to start a season of climbing about the time that the rest of this group was winding down for the year and getting ready for a long Ohio winter of drinking and watching television. However, early in January a couple of years back, somebody in the group suggested that my training partner and I should show the rest of the group around this area to show off some of the climbs that we had developed and were projecting. At the time, it seemed like a good enough idea, and everyone enjoyed a day out in the fresh, crisp, dry air in the hallow as winter finally started to take hold, even if they didn’t enjoy the climbing.
After a long, dejecting day of not completing my project climb I hiked over to my perch overlooking the entire hallow to collect myself and to catch my breath, I had to run back to the real interior of the area to recover one of my camera lenses (about a half mile of moderate terrain). As I sat there and watched as everyone worked their way down the hill to the bottom of the gully and back to the trailhead I took a couple of moments, to snap this shot that I thought would be part of a slide show for a presentation my friend and I were putting together for the Access Fund to demonstrate our need for help to increase access to climbing here in Ohio, but what actually happened was an epiphany about how I fit into this landscape. That I didn’t necessarily agree with the idea that we needed to increase access to these areas in Ohio – that the rest of the climbing world can believe that Ohio is a flat, wasteland of a state, with nothing to contribute in terms of climbing – I know, and my close friends know the more complete truth and we are just as well to keep it that way, which again fits with the external stigma of Southeast Ohio as part of an Appalachian landscape, how John Boorman depicts the backcountry in Deliverance.
In terms of definitional lessons learned from this narrative, this demonstrates how the purpose of the experience can change the appearance or presence of a landscape. Tuan references the Cemetery as a type of landscape that receives a special perception in people’s minds. We all have our own variety of reasons to visit a cemetery, and we each carry a perception and reason for frequenting on any given day. Just as my purpose for crawling up “my hill” and taking a nap at the base of one of those hemlock trees has changed, and my perception of that space, that landscape has changed and inevitably will continue to evolve as I age and the hillside erodes.
CONCLUSION
Although Landscape can and is often tied to scenic images of nature, or urban settings, the most important factors to consider are the place, time, and purpose surrounding the description of the landscape. As the “Landscape of College Football”, changes on a weekly basis throughout the course of a season and changes depending on where the snapshot is taken as well as which football analyst or fan is making the description of the landscape. So as a matter of distilling this meandering story down to its final point:
Landscape =Sx,y,z∫{Ti ± Px ± R ± C}
I break one final time to draw attention to my perch one more time, only this time I take it from the valley /hallow floor on a day in April of last year as winter finally let go of its hold, but before spring gets complete control, to demonstrate a quick final point about the concept of defining landscape. I make this argument from a particular perspective or perception, but that perception changes, as does the weather, as the fog lifts from the valley floor, you still can’t see my spot… So who’s to say that it’s an actual place, or some fabrication of my mind? But at the same time, what difference does it make?
