Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Are we friends to the landscape?


By DICK DORWORTH

"We are children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it."

—Lawrence Durrell

The landscape inevitably dictates behavior of its inhabitants. No matter the measure of each person's response (or relative lack thereof), the landscape also influences if not dictates much about our thinking. Even those who spend most of their lives in caves of spiritual retreat, gated communities of privilege and security, mental boxes of many sizes, ambitious professional cubicles and offices of any size, and, of course, the circumference of their own heads, respond in both thought and action to the unruly landscapes surrounding those more easily controlled environments.

I refer not to the uncluttered landscape of well-manicured lawns, tidy gardens of flowers and vegetables, pruned (and sprayed) trees and shrubs, stone walkways, fountains and ponds, attractive and comforting as those may be. No, I mean nature's more boisterous landscape of fields, canyons, forests, streams, glaciers, mountains, rivers, hills, prairies, deserts, rock walls, lakes, oceans, fog-obscured ridgelines, snow-covered peaks and evening and morning light on all of them, the one that would do just fine without its children's interference or even presence.

Each person's internal and external perspective of the landscape is different. An open-pit gold miner's perspective of landscape is very different from that of a wildlife biologist's. A real estate developer will not see the same landscape he wishes to develop as its longtime neighbors. An inhabitant of a valley who never leaves the lowlands does not see the same landscape as one who periodically ascends the hills forming that valley. The city dweller leaving his apartment for the day's work greets a very different landscape than does the Alaskan fisherman casting his nets. The value judgments involved in determining which perspective is best, valid, true or even real leads to endless discussion, argument and even conflict, but how a person views the landscape matters. The fate of the Earth is in each person's hands, or, rather, perspective.

If it isn't, then whose hands is it in? DuPont's? Exxon Mobil's? Monsanto's? Archer Daniels Midland's? GE's? General Dynamics'? Alcoa's? The Pentagon's?

It seems to me that the landscape is our best friend and truest guide in life, which, as Durrell points out, is the natural response of children to their parent(s). A good question to ask ourselves in return is, "What kind of friends are we to the landscape?"

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At this stage of the road of life I tend to note the changes in familiar landscapes as well as the changes in my own perspective of those same places. Last month, I visited Reno, Nev., where I was born and spent most of my formative years. I hiked to the summit of Mount Rose, the predominant peak west of town, a place I've visited dozens of times, the first more than 50 years ago, the last more than 10 years ago carrying my grandson on my back. Now there is an unfamiliar paved parking lot at the summit of the Mount Rose highway and functioning, clean toilets at the trailhead of a new (to me), well-maintained trail.

I encountered some 40 other people on the more than 10-mile roundtrip hike, by far the most I'd ever seen. This is good, I think, for people who take the time and energy to do things like long hikes up prominent peaks in their neighborhoods will have a healthier, more appreciative perspective of the landscape than those who spend (sic) that same time in the shopping mall. This is bad, I think, for too many people always tend to degrade and damage and then destroy the landscape. Such things are a matter of scale and, of course, care. What kind of friends are we to the landscape?

I rested at the summit of Mount Rose, chatted with a couple I'd met on the trail, and looked down on the familiar, spectacular views of the landscape in all directions across two states. West was Truckee, Donner Lake and Donner Summit. From northeast to southeast were Reno, Washoe Valley and Carson City, connected by road and not so slowly merging into one continuous community. South was Lake Tahoe, the Lake of the Sky where I lived as a boy and learned to ski and first learned to see and appreciate landscape. I know that the process of eutrophication is not so slowly diminishing the quality and clarity of the waters of this most beautiful of all mountain lakes, and a haze/smog/polluted air blanketing the Tahoe basin, Washoe Valley, Reno and the Truckee/Donner area is visible to the least discerning eye.

I respond to this landscape with this column rooted in the thought that as children of the landscape we could and should and need to be far better friends to it than we are.

Don't you think?




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