Rob Harrison wrote:
> Interesting article on the nature of nature photography, in a non-
> photo magazine.
>
> <http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/06-3om/Hand.html>
>
> This is one of my favorite eco-freak magazines. Fantastic photos,
> great writing. Wendell Berry is on the board of directors.
>
Great read, thanks.
Now who was it that called the marsh I posted a photo of a swamp? It's
actually near Pretty Marsh Rd., and can be very pretty without being
spectacular.
Most of Europe was one gigantic, largely unbroken, forest in prehistory.
Those glorious views with which GeeBee treats us, although including
nature, are man-made, and quite unlike the way nature had them arranged
before:
"Southern England, for example, is one of the largest structures ever
made by man. We think of it as nature: the beautiful expanse of towns,
villages, forests and moors that extends from Cornwall to Kent and from
the south coast to the Midlands. We think of it as natural, but of
course it is man-made, almost all of it. It wasn't there three thousand
years ago. It is a consciously created structure, perhaps 300 miles by
100 miles, and it has been created slowly, patiently, over a period of
about a thousand years."
Christopher Alexander,
The Nature of Order, Book One, The Phenomenon of Life, pp 28-29
I'm not entirely in agreement with Guy Hand's emotional viewpoint, nor
unsympathetic to it. We won't go back to what was without a disaster to
force us, we are just too many for that now. On the other hand, we can
create living areas that include nature and beauty and let those areas
that aren't really suited for a comfortable co-existance between us and
nature return to a natural state.
A classic example might be the dry prairies of the US upper
western-midwest. Never hospitable to us and always marginal for
agriculture, they are losing population and towns are dying out. As land
is abandoned, it is being bought up by people like Ted Turner who are
knocking down the buildings and fences to let the land revert to a
natural state. Of course, it will not return to what it was before man
came. After all, our early ancestors on this continent appear to have
been responsible for the extinction of species like the mammoth and
sabertooth tiger and "exotic" flora and fauna will remain. But it will
return to the state nature develops with the materials at hand.
Thundering herds of free range Bison may return.
I understand the emotional aspect of the loss of much of small town
America, but in some areas, it seems to me to be part of a natural
process of coming into a different, and healthier, balance with nature.
Now back to your regularly scheduled sports and Mac programming. :-)
Moose
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|