Thesis Excerpt (pt. 3): Human as Nature, Landscape as Memory
Observations on the Trail
British geographer, Denis Cosgrove defines landscape as the “external world mediated through human subjective experience.” I’d define a place that way. A lived-in landscape becomes a place, which implies intimacy; a once-lived in landscape can be a place, if explored, or remain a landscape, if simply observed. Sometimes a spontaneous attraction to a place is really an emotional response to the landscape, which is place at a distance, visual rather than sensual, seen rather than felt in all its affective power.7
From The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard
My work begins with immersing myself in the natural world. When seeing a landscape for the first time, I approach with curiosity and search for hidden moments of light and color around every turn. This heightened sensorial perception becomes a key part of my seeing, and I focus on how natural moments relate to my body through movement, touch, and scent. I use this bodily and mental memory to reimagine these spaces when recreating them in the studio.
When I come across a site that interests me, I spend time drawing or painting directly from observation. If I’m on a long hike, I will bring a small sketchbook to make quick pencil drawings, or if I’m near to where I’m staying, I will bring my supplies and paint en plein air, spending a morning or full day immersed and observing the life that happens there. While painting in a greenbelt outside of Austin, I was startled to see a rabbit run across the path and a coyote trailing close behind. They disappeared into the bushes as the rabbit escaped. Minutes before, joggers and couples had pleasantly walked by, having no idea of the drama at their heels. While spending the day with a place, I enjoy getting to know its secret stories.
This encounter reminded me of a passage in Secrets of the Talking Jaguar by Martín Prechtel. In becoming a shaman, Prechtel’s teacher Chiv assigns him to observe the life happening at his feet at one spot on the ground for an entire day. Martín watches two spiders battling for territory, fighting several rounds. Eventually one kills the other and takes his territory, only to be killed and eaten by a descending wasp, who in turn is eaten by a lizard dropping out of a tree. Then ants clean up the remains.
Anybody who wasn’t able to read the dramatic stories taking place in all nature would never be able to read that nature in human life. This type of looking taught us the shamanic understanding that all beings had to eat and live out their nature. That was a blessing, and that’s how we saw it.8
Observing the will of other life forms takes me out of my human perspective, and I’m aware of the ecosystem we’re all a part of. I feel connected to these creatures who are also just figuring out how to navigate this world.
I am captivated by stories found within the landscapes I dwell, but I also choose to travel to landscapes far from my own that feel like another world. The element of travel shakes me out of my routine. As I adapt to my new surroundings, I’m more attuned to each detail. Seeing a landscape as a traveler, I feel respect and distance from the space. There is a reverence to this type of looking that feels sacred as if on a pilgrimage. Similarly, in describing moments of a ritual, Prechtel writes:
Every movement in the village was synonymous with a ritual edifice where corners and doorways, insides and outsides, were inhabited by the Deities. If you knew how to speak, offer, and move, there were myriad doorways of different styles, and each opened onto the world kingdoms of different Gods and their families. Even if they lived far away at certain times, God places were dangerous, so shamans learned courteous ways to approach these things.9
Before entering new terrain, I research local lore, myths, and legends for inspiration. I’m interested in learning how others saw the site before me. Perhaps it will tell me a little about the people who have lived here, their perspectives and experiences. In Looking for the Hidden Folk, Nancy Marie Brown explains how places and place names hold stories. For instance, if you read the Icelandic sagas, it would be hard not to see the stories everywhere in Iceland. She writes:
As you hike south from Stykkisholmur, through the rain and the mud, your backpack heavy, greylag geese honking mournfully overhead, and your eye catches sight of the sheer north face of Helgafell, itself catching a low glimmer of sunlight slipping between the leaden clouds, it’s impossible not to imagine, if you’ve read Eyrbyggja Saga, the side of the hill opening up like doors.10
As well as sagas, personal stories also find root in the landscape; the life you live there becomes part of its lore to you.
In Norway, it was no surprise to read about giants after seeing the scale of their cliffs above the fjords. No other being could have inhabited this space, humans are too tiny. And in discovering dark crevices that still hold sheets of ice where the temperature drops 10 degrees in mid-summer, I could understand believing ice giants lived there. Once, I looked down a cliff at the massive waterfall, Vøringfossen, whose mist created massive arcing rainbows that went from sky to ground. No wonder there were Norse myths of a rainbow bridge connecting realms. On a hillside, the massive boulders covered with moss glimpsed through trees held so much personality and presence (Fig. 5.1). They could be sleeping trolls turned to stone during the day, waiting to awaken. Through this lens, the landscape becomes a living myth.
Stories like these build worlds. Brown quotes S. Leonard Rubinstein in his book, Writing, A Habit of Mind:
We are born and we die. An unbroken line stretches from one to the other. Yet we are able to say, “I had a strange experience the other day.” What enables us to take a segment of that unbroken line and call it an experience?11
It is our ability to weave stories by selectively remembering important moments to create a narrative. And with our stories about a landscape, we can protect the place.12
- Lucy Lippard, The Lure of the Local (New York: New Press, 1997), 7-8.
- Martín Prechtel, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar: Memoirs from the Living Heart of a Mayan Village (New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), 150.
- Prechtel, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar,
- Nancy Marie Brown, Looking for the Hidden Folk (New York: Pegasus Books, Ltd, 2022).