Fall 2022 (21st issue)

MIDDLEBURY GEOGRAPHIC

In space, we find form. The land we tread upon, the water in which we submerge and the air that fills our lungs are all amplifications of the textures that define the spaces we inhabit. These dimensions of space ground us and define our place in larger ecological and social communities. Finding an appreciation for the landscapes that nurture us can be challenging, yet is a critical step toward developing a more intimate and genuine relationship with the natural world.

An appreciation for space is cultivated through an exploration of the levels of landscape. The inhabitant of a space must be humble. They must acknowledge that their understanding of the landscape will never be complete, that their relationship with it will never include the incredible diversity held within a single frame of existence. This should not deter the explorer, but rather invite them to look closer, delve deeper.

Landscape is not only a matter of seeing, but an experience of feeling. While spaces we value likely appeal to us visually, we remember them by the emotions they elicit within us. Interactions with landscape are not uniform. As demonstrated in this issue, they may involve other organisms, species, elements, or people. It is within this complex web of environmental interaction that we fully connect with space.

An environment is composed of scales. They layer upon each other, run into one another, nourish the next one and then the next. Gaining an understanding of an environment may focus on a single scale such as the intricacies of South American bird behavior, or the awe-inspiring grandeur of Icelandic mountains. It is in this specificity that we become intimate with our environments. We gain an appreciation for the microbes and the megafauna, for the Sequoia and the lichen that grows upon it. We become more intune with the interdependence between scales of ecology. In recognizing the magnitude of variation in landscape, we are ultimately able to feel an environment. Get close to it. Acknowledge our place in it. This 19th edition of Middlebury Geographic is a collection of explorations into the scales of landscape that make us feel. It is in these spaces that we learn the most about ourselves, and we continue to come back to, over and over again.

Words by Haley Hutchinson, Co Editor-in-Chief

Photos by Jiffy Lesica

CONTRIBUTORS

CARSON WILLIAMS '23

Carson grew up in a very outdoors-focused family from which he inherited his father and grandfather's obsessions with fish and bugs respectively. It's his own love for nature that he hopes to convey in his pieces.

Ethan spends a lot time outside birdwatching, fly fishing, and photographing wildlife. He loves learning new things about the world we live in and sharing that with others.

SUJAY BANERJEE '25

Sujay is a sophomore from Pittsburgh, PA majoring in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. Some of his interests include traveling and taking landscape photography, playing squash, and learning the guitar.

HANWEN ZHANG '24

Hanwen Zhang is a beginner hiker and snowboarder from Shanghai, China. He is excited to travel to places with a lot of snow.

LIBBY SCAPEROTTA '24

Libby is an Environmental Policy and Geography student from Fayston, Vermont. She enjoys photography, live music, and swimming in the summer with friends. ETHAN RISING '24.5

HARPER HARPER '24.5

Harper (they/them) is from Cleveland, Ohio and is a proud lover of visual art, mountains, tea, and the moon. They are in a dino phase.

SYLVIE LYU '24

Sylvie was born and raised in Beijing, China. She has a passion for creative works; through writing and drawing, she has been exploring ways to live with awe, faith and vision in an increasingly rationalized world.

MADELEINE GALLOP '23.5

Madeleine studies

Geography, Arabic, and Computer Science. She is from Boulder, Colorado and is excited about canoeing, skiing, and weekly pancake breakfasts.

BRETT GILMAN '24.5

Brett Gilman is an independent scholar in Socio-Ecological Studies in Landscape Architecture from Connecticut. An organic farmer for over ten years and an Accredited Organic Land Care Professional, he designs and installs landscapes at the intersection of aesthetics and ecology. When he's not digging in the dirt, he enjoys reading, hiking, hammocking, and hanging out with friends.

elements

Reflections on Insects

Ipad softly across the road, closer to a California Sister (Adelpha californica), butterfly net in hand. My grandfather follows close behind. In a patch of dandelions below the massive stump of an ancient Oak, the insect opens its orange-tipped, black wings. All I can hear are birds chirping and leaves rustling as a soft breeze shifts the branches of the trees around us.

The Sister minds its own business, warming itself as it nectars from the flower below. I reach the edge of the road. I know as soon as I step off the asphalt, the leaves will give away my approach, and my target will flit away. I look back at Gramps, he gives me a nod. I lunge into the flower patch, net extended, praying I will reach my mark.

I land face-down, in a pile of sharp, brown oak leaves, but look up to find my net occupied. My grandfather clasps me on the shoulder and pulls me up with a smile.

Carson Williams • California

For over seventy years now, my grandfather, Ben Williams III, has been a collector of butterflies and moths. What started as a childhood fancy quickly evolved into a hobby when his grandmother told him:

‘Well, if you’re going to do this, let’s do it right.’ So, she bought me my first butterfly net, spreading boards, and cases to put them in… there was a brief hiatus when I was in college and, of course, in the service. But I couldn’t resist myself when I was at Camp David, walking the perimeter fences at night… [seeing the big, beautiful silk moths] and I started collecting again.

Since then, he’s traveled and collected in the Philippines, the Amazon, Tanzania, Turkey, Spain, and all over the United States. These travels for insects typically were not luxury experiences either, especially when the quarry is nocturnal. Shabby lodging, stained mattresses, nights sleeping under cars and unusually bad weather adorn his stories

like honors when he talks about encountering the moths he was searching for.

I recall when Gramps would visit California, he and I would go hiking in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. We would pass skippers (Hylephila phyleus), Buckeyes (Junonia coenia), and Grey hairstreaks (Strymon melinus) milling about fields of wildflowers. Back then, I bombarded him with questions: have you ever caught butterflies up in the mountains? Which one is your favorite? What’s that blue one called? “Well, Cars, I have collected in the mountains and there are very pretty insects up there. I don’t know if I have a favorite right now. That blue one is called a Hairstreak.” I was always left dumbstruck by his knowledge of what seemed like everything to me. I was only ever able to respond with the most basic: “Wow.”

When Gramps wasn’t visiting and my mother was working in her garden, I would count the Tiger Swallowtails and Monarchs as I chased them

from one side of the lawn to the other. I even went so far as to buy a pocketbook to see what different butterflies and moths looked like around the world, picking my favorites and planning trips to see such insects in my future, completely unaware at the time of how brutal some of these bugging excursions can be.

I always loved the colors these creatures added— vibrant yellows, blues, purples, and oranges scattering color across the landscape. They bounce from plant to stamen, blending and amplifying the hues of each petal. In a field of flowers, butterflies behave like an artist blending the colors together in constant correction. They make a field of flowers never look the same between glances.

Fifteen years later, I only come home now for the occasional vacation. While I don’t like chasing butterflies around like I used to, I still get a great deal of joy out of watching them play. Over the visits, those beautiful insects have become more and

more scarce. It’s quite difficult to see the same symphony of colors in one’s backyard like I used to and it’s not just butterflies.

While it’s easy to be aware of the falling Monarch population and the diminishing number of butterflies, what I’ve come to understand is that it’s almost every insect on the planet that has been suffering, and in turn, so has the natural beauty of our world. In a recent conversation with my grandfather, he noted:

This phenomenon is prevalent all over the United States and the rest of the world as well. As habitats shrink and climates change, insects, animals, and plants are all forced to find new places to get a foothold. Sadly, some aren’t quite as resilient to change as others.

In the case of insects, being driven from a certain habitat can mean certain death, especially with the volumes of insecticide being produced and used all over America.

Everything in the animal kingdom is down! And

There's an incredible decline in both total numbers and numbers of species. Part of that is due to global warming: species that were comfortable here no longer are… some have probably moved north. There are probably half a dozen species, maybe even more than that - actually I’m sure it’s more than that - that no longer exist in Connecticut.

a lot of that has to do with habitat loss… [and] increasing use of pesticides has killed an awful lot of things. Increasing pollution, these [animals], a lot of them are very sensitive to pollution. That’s why they used Canaries in the coal mines years ago because if the canaries started dropping dead, you’d better get out of there!

Because humanity is releasing millions of chemicals into the air every day, it’s impossible to understand just how each one impacts the species around us, especially when it comes to pollution and insecticides. Scientists are still trying to pinpoint the exact reason why insect populations are dropping off so suddenly and steeply and what can be done to flatten the curve, but more and more it seems like there isn’t just one bleeding wound to staunch. According to Ben, “It’s death by a thousand cuts, it’s not any one thing. It’s an accumulation of things that have taken a tremendous toll.”

Pinpointing an exact reason for falling populations may be impossible, but despite the doom and gloom, there have been great success stories. Take for example the California Monarch population. This past year, their population increased by 35% in part due to the efforts of homeowners in the San Francisco area planting Milkweed in their gardens.1 Small efforts like these can lead to great change. Bald Eagles and Ospreys used to be in a similar boat. Their populations dropped to almost nothing in the

later part of the 1900s, but thanks to the concerted efforts of folks conserving crucial areas, those birds made a comeback. Not to say that insects are exactly like birds but determining crucial areas and environments for butterflies and insects, in general, is paramount to bringing insect populations back up. Thankfully, the insect biomass is still incredibly diverse, so taking small steps like reducing the number of pesticides and planting native plants, especially in home gardens and farms would make it possible for insects to get more of a foothold rather than having their populations slip further.

Grow

The seeds of love

The seeds of presence

The seeds of acceptance

I follow my two yellow labs into my backyard, the two of them entirely preoccupied with the smells that changed overnight and relieving themselves after a good sleep. My eyes are still heavy, and I know that my workday is right around the corner. As I watch the dogs, I notice a Monarch and a Swallowtail flitting around the stalks of my mother’s old rose garden.

The two butterflies circle each other quickly then separate a bit before they reentwine moving just above the old flower stalks. I watch them for a moment and smile. I remember my childhood surrounded by these butterflies, hoping that others’ lives have been significantly impacted by the beautiful world still around us.

I believe that in our desire to keep the beauty in the world, we will come to understand more about what we can do to regrow from what is left. Perhaps it is my grandfather’s legacy that his stories and knowledge are shared to achieve a better tomorrow for humans and insects alike.

Birds of Chile

a photo essay by Ethan Rising

ADark-bellied Cinclodes pauses to give me a look before continuing to pick around the tide pools, not seeming to mind my fumbling as I wobble across slippery rocks trying to photograph it. These are my favorite birds to photograph, as they have an animated personality and can be found in a variety of habitats.

August 5th was typical by Valdivia standards: rainy, foggy, and cold. I figured that this weather would keep the beaches pretty empty, so I hopped on a bus to Niebla to do some coastal birding. Soon I was scanning past the main point in Niebla where opposing currents run into each other just offshore, watching Peruvian Boobys tuck their wings and crash into the water at tremendous speeds. All of a sudden, a huge dark bird lumbered past the point, lazily cruising above the waves breaking on the rocks – a Southern Giant Petrel. While not a rare bird, it was not one I necessarily expected to see on a spontaneous midweek adventure.

Idid not wake up on a rainy Monday thinking I would get the privilege to come face to face with a Many-colored Rush Tyrant, or Siete Colores. In fact, I didn’t even take my camera with me while I walked because of how thick the fog was. But as I continued down the Calle Calle River, I noticed a small songbird hopping around the reeds. Mistaking this bird was impossible. I took a quick video through my binoculars and frantically ran back home to get my camera. Luckily, he seemed content chasing bugs along the riverside and allowed me to get a handful of frames before we parted ways.

Turning a corner in Torres del Paine National Park and seeing the landscape unfold was spectacular: towering cliffs, massive glaciers, and turquoise lakes combined to create a breathtaking environment.

When this Crested Caracara flew up and perched on the broken branch, it seemed that it too was taking a glance at the incredible view behind it.

On a whim, I asked the driver to pull over at an overlook of the crystal-clear Trancura River. Immediately I noticed several Neotropic Cormorants on boulders in the main current, but looking down past the vegetation and mist, I could make out two smaller shapes on a rock closer to the bank: a pair of Torrent Ducks!

architectural china

Eaves of a pavilion at Jingshan.

Jingshan is an imperial park located in Beijing.

Arch leading to a shrine.

Lilium martagon (Asiatic lily) bulbs at Lake Kanas.

xinjiangChina

TIANSHAN mountains

Tianshan behind a drone.

Horse at Lake Kanas in Xinjiang, China.

fall in the ADIRONDACKS

Trametes veriscolor (turkey tail) at Ampersand Mountain in the Adirondacks, NY. 

as seen: a landscape photoseries

— Sujay Banerjee

Ponta da Piedade is a signature of the Algarve region beaches, as the rock formations scatter the coastline.

Þingvallavegur, Iceland

Haukadalur Geothermal Field is home to hot springs, fumaroles, mud pots, and the spectacular geysers Strokkur and Great Geysir.

Duoro Valley, Portugal

The dreamy landscapes and quaint villages of Duoro Valley are renowned for their vineyards.

Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

Multnomah Falls is one of the highest year-round waterfalls in the US at 620' and it flows into the Gorge.

Glaciology

libby scaperotta | iceland 

My core class while studying abroad in Copenhagen was a Glaciology and Climate course. I had chosen this class partly because I thought Geology was cool, but mostly because I had heard a rumor that the class went to Iceland for a week. Luckily for me, the rumor ended up being true. And, it was sick.

After a week of study in Iceland, the rest of our class returned to Denmark on Saturday morning. Three friends and I decided to skip classes on Monday and stay an extra couple of days.

At midnight, with a huge map of the country crumpled on the floor between us, the four of us traced out our potential camping and road trip route. We pitched ideas of geysers or waterfalls to each other and scoured through deep internet blogs in an attempt to find any hidden destinations. We picked up a car at the airport and after hearing some words of advice from our professor on the most dangerous activities to avoid, we set off.

 This is a photo of Eldhraun lava field — an expanse of aged black lava covered by green moss. I thought it was pretty cool.

ELDHRAUN LAVA FIELD

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER

When hiking into the glacier, we passed several markers of where it used to reach in the past decades. For me, physically hiking the incredible distance that the glacier has retreated was astonishing, rather than just reading these numbers in our textbook. It was completely surreal to walk on this glacier, which would be entirely unrecognizable if I were to return in 50 years. With current rates of global warming, the Vatnajökull glacier is predicted to melt completely in the next 150-200 years.

 This photo was taken on an outlet of the Vatnajökull glacier. My class spent one day with guides exploring the glacier and discussing its transformations over time. Walking onto a glacier wasn’t really something I ever expected myself to do, ever. It was insane.

While it rained nearly every day that we were in Iceland, after driving around for two hours in the wind and rain one morning, the clouds parted to reveal a sliver of blue sky. Nearly a minute later, the sun miraculously poked through. This was the first time we had seen the sun in a week. Immediately, we pulled over at the next possible road. We jumped out of the car and frolicked around this lava field like little kids in celebration of the sunshine.

snæfellsness peninsula

Our decided route was mostly along the Snæfellsness Peninsula. Many years ago I saw a movie that featured the mountain that sits on the edge of this peninsula; I have dreamed about it ever since.

KIRKJUFELL

Thisis the mountain that I saw in that movie. Now you can see why I might have insisted that we drive along this peninsula. It was absurd to see it in real life. The only thing to bring me back to reality was the rain completely soaking through my coat, making me shiver.

In the days preparing for the class trip, our professor warned us of the rain and wind we would encounter. She suggested that we test our rain gear in a shower to best mimic the conditions and set our expectations. She was not wrong. In the trail parking lot, the wind was so violent that it unclipped my friend’s rain pants and blew them across the road. We chased after them, out of breath from laughter, as the wind threw the pants further out of reach.

At first, we drove right past this pull-off. The three of us in the passenger and back seats turned around and watched the view from our windows longingly as we passed. Thankfully, someone suggested: “Do you guys wanna turn around and hang out there?” We made a complete U-turn to get back to this spot.

I found so much comfort in every aspect of this adventure. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. In the backseat of a car in the middle of nowhere, queueing up songs, snacking on cheerios, and watching the landscape pass by.

Mountaineering HARPER HARPER • SOUTHERN CHILE

Patagonia Region 2022

A collection of my best photos from exploring the mountains of southern Chile.

We were the first rope team to cross this ridge. It was incredibly steep on both sides, with very little room to stand with both feet next to each other. We continued on to (almost) summit the mountain in the clouds.

a long day's summit.

These were some of the most challenging, yet rewarding adventures of my life. It was an honor to experience these fast-disappearing glaciers.

I scouted along this route to find a line up and around the ice cliff. We were on our way to the second summit of the day. As the condors soared below us, we found ourselves among a beautiful view of the Andes.

REFLECTIONS

a Market in Beijing

SYLVIE LYU • CHINA

Although I was born and raised in Beijing, China, I have never considered myself to know the city well. I grew up in a quiet and orderly neighborhood in the city center, only a 15-minute-walk from Tiananmen Square. As a middle-class child, I have been familiar with apartments, paved roads, shopping malls and westernstyled restaurants. Yet my reality was only a tiny slice in the gigantic ecosystem called “Beijing”. Turn right from a main road, and you might find yourself in a small alley (hutong) with one-story brick houses, watching elderly men playing chess beside the wall. Get on a random bus from the city center and sit for two hours, and you may arrive at a half-abandoned neighborhood with one locked store after another. Spend some time with the residents, and you would hear recollections of micro-cultures that have been buried: in recent years the Beijing municipal government has been clearing away street stalls and small markets, together with the undocumented migrants who work there, to uphold the city’s identity as the “cultural and political center of China."

I first began to explore the city during high school. Perhaps “explore” is not the right word — it implies the hunt for spectacle hidden somewhere, waiting to be discovered, while my goal was simply to see. On December 27, 2020, I visited the Shilihe Market of Flowers, Birds, Fish and Insects, armed with a camera. The market is located in a huge warehouse in the Shilihe neighborhood, a mediator between urban and suburban Beijing. It has long been a place for local residents to relax, chat, and buy fun toys and ornaments for their children. Among the hustle and bustle of the main road, I was greeted by a traditional-styled, carved archway with golden characters — “Shilihe Cultural Street.” Parking my bike near the entrance, I dove in.

What does it mean to photograph a place, anyway?

As a first-time visitor, I knew so little about the composition and culture of the place: who were the vendors and the customers, and why did they come here? What did they chat about, and what would they do outside of the market? What was the significance of the goldfish, flowers and dried walnuts in the stores? I cannot pretend to be a faithful documenter, nor an insightful scholar — my photos probably reveal more about me than about the place. In the end, the question is about power. Documentation of a place inevitably involves representation, and to publish a photo means to convey that inherently biased image to an audience. As an international student from a well-off family, I have the privilege of publishing photos of Shilihe in Middlebury Geographic, bringing my interpretation of Shilihe to a mostly American audience unfamiliar with the place – a power that many local vendors and customers lack. By using this privilege without in-depth personal experiences in the neighborhood, am I being irresponsible? Would I end up propagating a version of Shilihe that has little to do with the neighborhood’s living reality? This dilemma became even more unsettling when I began photographing people.

Looking into the viewfinder of my camera, I was reminded of the countless photographs of Tibetan herdsmen where the subjects seemed little more than an aggregation of interesting attires, hairstyles and facial features, and I wondered if I was making the same mistake. At one stall, I chatted with a vendor and bought a potted pitcher plant from her. She told me that small businesses like hers were suffering because of the COVID pandemic, and many vendors had abandoned their stores to make a living elsewhere. I wanted to ask her if I could take a photo of her with her potted plants, but at that moment, it felt so inconsiderate. As I walked around, I understood what she meant: beyond the crowd in the center, about half of the market alleys had gone empty. I went over my photos feeling uneasy, realizing that as I mused over how to aesthetically capture “a sense of desolation,” vendors in the neighborhood were struggling for their daily sustenance. There seemed to be an unbridgeable gap between an artistic suffering and a real one.

Still, I decide to publish these photos — not because I have resolved the problems discussed above, but because I hope to reveal them and create dialogues surrounding them. Dear readers and viewers, I hope you will dive in with cautious curiosity and reflection. What would you do if you walked into such an unfamiliar place? How would you document it as an outsider — or would you document it at all?

A QUIETER SENSE OF PLACE

MADELEINE GALLOP • JORDAN

Last semester, I studied abroad in Amman, Jordan. There, I found day-to-day life busy and confusing.

Exploring a city in the Middle East where I was just beginning to grasp the language required me to be fully engaged throughout the day as I negotiated with taxi drivers, navigated webs of streets, and managed miscommunications. But, strangely, when I reflect on my time abroad, the frenetic atmosphere is not what I remember most. I took the following photos during the quieter, more serene moments of the semester. Ultimately, looking back, these impressions reflect my most potent sense of being abroad.

The first early morning walk was on a cool, rainy day in late January. I had not yet discovered the impressive challenge of navigating the steep, winding hills of downtown Amman and had planned an ambitious route. Although I did not recognize the city’s stillness in that moment as unique, I was aware and grateful for the lull in the usually constant stream of vehicles that shared the road with me.

The early morning market in the city of Al-Salt on a cool, misty day.

After a full day of driving, the winding King’s Highway came to an end at a small, empty parking lot about 15 minutes from Wadi Musa. We had expected the area surrounding Petra to be touristic, but on the evening of our arrival, we explored Siq al-Barid (Little Petra) blissfully alone.

As the sun dipped behind the walls of the sandstone canyon, we traced the ancient city’s twisting paths. In the still silence of Siq al-Barid, we wandered its extent, taking secret

staircases to sandy landings and weaving in and out of cavernous rooms carved into the stone.

While my experience of day to day life studying in Jordan and traveling in the Middle East was rather chaotic, the quieter moments, such as Amman in the rain, Siq al-Barid at the end of a long day, and Al Jem in midsummer, ultimately cultivated my sense of deep connectedness to that once foreign, and now familiar landscape.

SEARCHING FOR LANDSCAPE

BRETT GILMAN • VERMONT

Growing up, I often found myself surveying the landscape through the backseat window during our family past-time of driving, each instant a picture in a rolling slide deck of 70 mile-per-hour scenes. It was here that I watched everything and nothing. On weekend pilgrimages up Interstate-91 from home in Connecticut to homeland in Vermont, gazing out the window was the best way to pass the time. Years later, I recognize that my hours spent leaning headagainst-seatbelt constituted a veritable apprenticeship in looking.

When I started driving, my perspective shifted. I was now at the steering wheel, and my curiosity continued. Now with a prime view through the front windshield, I discovered a newfound freedom in the ability to pursue sights that piqued my interest. Turning down a fascinating road or investigating a glimpse of a wildflower was now just a matter of putting on my blinker.

This past summer and fall, I began to photograph landscapes. Shifting my focus from the miniscule curves of flower buds and pollinators to a view of wide-angle landscape shots mirrored an academic transition from conceiving of place through the lens of individual species, to a perception based on the unified sum of all parts. In his seminal text, John Stilgoe maps the literal and figurative essence of landscape and identifies a fundamental practice of landscape as noun, idea, and opportunity. 1 He asks the foundational question: What is landscape? Over the past few months, I’ve rolled this question over in my mind, savoring it like a slowly melting maple candy. In a subconscious quest to find answers, I found myself returning to my roots. With my camera calling shotgun, I entrusted my dear Jeep with a set of directions I did not yet know. Cruising familiar New England country roads and cautiously turning down newfound dirt tracks, I defined a practice of appreciating what others so often overlook. What follows is a collection of ruminations on landscape, its many modes of manifestation, and its ways of articulating meaning in a world deaf to the undertones of place.

Landscape is subjective . As embodied creatures defined by uniqueness, our perceptions of landscape vary. Height, eyesight quality, a tendency to look down – these factors all contribute to the creation of a singular view simply defined by our own physicality. Moving through the landscape thus becomes choreographed, an embodied experience in space. Landscape also occupies the faculties of the mind, and through daydreams, memory, and longing, inner landscapes emerge like poetry. 2 The miniature becomes immense, the house becomes fortress, the corner becomes a nest. 3 Through the imagination, the topography of our own selves arises in a reinterpretation of the landscapes that come to define us.

Landscape is history . The land bears the traces of the past, and clues peek through between modernity and new growth. Here in New England, structures from the agricultural past dot the landscape. The remains of stone walls weave through woods, and in some places, where there are intentional gaps, the soil is still compacted from herds of sheep running through. Whereas most of the land was clear cut to grow crops and animals, secondary succession forests have arisen, and the stone walls now align with the trees to create a unique regional character. These elements of the past are an integral part of the landscape and interweave with the present to create a complex story of place.

Landscape is language . The language of landscape is written in a dialogue between humans and natural elements. Wind, rain, ice, snow, and water carve the syllables of landscape. Like a poem, landscape has a code able to be understood by all who learn how to read it. A row of trees in the foreground becomes punctuation for a mountain range of a paragraph in the background. A river becomes the unifying composition for an island of city. Reading landscape yields place-based wisdom, a powerful tool for sparking the imagination. 4 To treat landscape as a classic text or a great orator is to pay heed to a way of speaking that is always present, yet heard by only those willing to listen.

Landscape is ecology . Plants know intimately how to read the language of site. Every ecological locale offers a unique combination of the conditions plants need to grow: moisture, light, and soil. And because plants are so attuned to this language, able to find the areas best suitable to their growth form, species come to define our impressions of a landscape. We associate low, wet valleys with hemlocks and ferns, the tops of

mountains with spruces and firs, and the borders of old fields with aspens and grasses. Plants make sense of landscape by sprouting associations, imprinting upon us their unique quirks and qualities that denote the emotion of the scenery. In this way, the demeanor of plants indicates to us how we should feel in a landscape, and distinct combinations of species determine the essence of a place.

Landscape is memory. In the same way that the perception of landscape is shaped by our bodily nature, so too is landscape the product of all that is remembered. Elements of landscape are deeply tied to past experiences, and recognizable elements can transport the mind back in time. Landscapes set the mood for impressionistic snippets of lived experience from long ago. A row of oaks encountered in a city park is thus reminiscent of the neighborhood streets walked down on family outings as a child. Snow falling deep on the ground awakens within the excited child at the foggy windowsill watching dreamily the first nighttime flakes drifting quietly and peacefully. The memory of landscape is also ingrained into our evolved psyche, passed down through DNA. A shady woodland edge looking over a bright meadow conjures the prehistoric safety felt in sheltered landscapes safe from danger, translating into a desire for refuge and prospect in the parks, gardens, and terraces of today. In this sense, landscape is in part formed through self-knowledge and reflection.

Landscape is metaphor . Metaphors have great bearing on how we understand the world and ourselves through their unique capacity to turn abstract concepts into comprehensible concrete forms. 5 Landscape thus becomes a means for articulating concepts for which we do not have words. Trees, rocks, rivers, and roads become a lexicon for annunciating feelings and sensations. Landscape as metaphor gives meaning to form, shaping abstractions into transmissible thoughts rooted in a concrete vocabulary of traits and objects found in a nature preserve, a city grid, or a pastoral farmland. A cliff becomes the barriers to the accomplishment you cannot yet reach; a peak the heights of achievement. Following observation and considered analysis, metaphor marks a transition in the conceptual understanding of landscape, as elements seen become smaller arcs of larger things. Through metaphor, landscape is extended to features of our lives and becomes a method for defining meaning in everyday thought.

Landscape is iconography . Functioning as a critical cultural image, landscape is a spatial method of human representation, conveying meaning and itself shaping social, cultural, and political issues. 6 Landscape is inextricably linked to contexts of power, worship, society, and culture conveyed through visual and verbal symbols and icons. Culture transforms elements of landscape into fundamental symbolic imagery, for example turning woodland into a representation of idealized social order through associations with the picturesque in 18th century England. 7 Many artists have sought to cultivate a distinct national identity through their framing of grand scenes of Earthen wonder, and rituals both religious and secular in nature are often rooted in particular associations with distinct land cover types.

When we arrive in a landscape, our unique physicality provides the lens through which we filter our perception, first through tracing glimpses of history, then by reading elements of punctuation and extruding the view through our own memory, a practice that allows us to translate landscape into metaphors born of iconography as a means of identifying with and making sense of what we see. This is the instantaneous practice of interpreting landscape, and it is one much more complex than what is simply captured in the shutter of a camera. The infamous trailhead proverb says leave only traces, take only photos, but it neglects all that is brought and left behind in a silent opening of hearts to the woods or the city, a communion unspoken but louder than any words.

My landscapes are a wooded horse trail hiked every fall, a sweep of green grass along a split-rail fence that meets the golden sky at the corner of the red barn, an overgrown ski trail filled with drifts of glittering summer wildflowers, a row of hearty maples along an old dirt road. At my desk or in a daydream, these threads of landscape become intertwined to form not a clear picture, but an impression at the nexus of spatial orientation and cognitive amalgamation. This is what makes landscape as a mode so unique: the power of the landscape idea is grounded in its fusion of spatial impressions and sociocultural manifestations. 8

They say that what is remembered is not a person’s actions, but the way those actions make others feel. The same can be said of landscape. The delineations of each trunk and twig, park path and avenue, do not come back to me. Rather, a blurring of the seen landscape image emerges in a process that does not serve to distort perception, but rather to add all of these elements that distinguish place from landscape. For in truth, the term landscape remains fixed to the idea of a predetermined view, while a modern understanding of place embraces conceptual threads that instill hills and barns, skylines and highways with individualized value. 9 The translation of landscape into place thus becomes a function of physicality, history, language, ecology, memory, metaphor, and iconography, all computed in an instant to form an annotated mind image grounded in concrete geographies but complicated by the strands of these abstract traces. Ultimately, place is deeply personal, making some spaces feel lost and lonely while others glow with the warmth of home. Landscape is fundamental to how we define meaning in, and discern a way through, human experience.

1 Stilgoe, John R. What Is Landscape? MIT Press, 2018.

2 Darley, Gillian. “How Gaston Bachelard Gave the Emotions of Home a Philosophy.” Aeon, Aeon Magazine, 17 Oct. 2017.

3 Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Penguin Classics, 2014.

4 Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Language of Landscape. Yale University Press, 1998.

5 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 2003.

6 Cosgrove, Denis, and Stephen Daniels, editors. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992.

7 Cosgrove, Denis. “The Political Iconography of Woodland in Later Georgian England.” The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, edited by Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 43–82.

8 Corner, James, and James Corner. “Introduction: Recovering Landscape as a Critical Cultural Practice.” Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1999, pp. 1–26.

9 Stafford, Fiona. “It's Not Easy to Make Landscape a Place: You Have to Feel It.” Edited by Sam Haselby, Aeon, Aeon Magazine, 7 Nov. 2016.

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Haley Hutchinson

Drew An-Pham

DESIGN

Jake Gilbert

Libby Scaperotta

Olivia Kilborn

Anna Krouse

PHOTO Jiffy Lesica

Siri Ahern

Emily Strasburg

Jayda Murray

EDITORS

SK Hurlock

Ethan DeMaio

Brett Gilman

Paige Indritz

Gus Romero

Paige Theodosopoulos

FRONT COVER

Michelle Fechtor

BACK COVER Jiffy Lesica

SPECIAL THANKS

William Wellesley

Photo by Jiffy Lesica