Response to “Room for Romanticizing (Part II)”
The following was posted by my friend Sippy in the discussion section of the “Room for Romanticizing” post. He’s one hell of an ecocritic and he has some excellent points here.
I really like your formulation of absence, presence, and potential in relation to the various landscapes you discuss. Also, to add to your metaphor—which, the more I think about it, the more and more apt it becomes—the forest landscape after a fire can actually be more fertile, alive, and diverse (with insects, mycelium, and small plants) than it is when it is dominated by old or mid-growth hardwoods or pines. Similar to the urban landscapes you mention, it’s all about decay and potential. Also, we like distance. In terms of landscape, distance give us space and safety while also vicariously providing us with the fear of the sublime (much like horror movies perhaps, except the distance in those is more predicated on the gaze). Humans evolved to feel uncomfortable in very closed-in and wooded spaces; we like to see where the predators are coming from. So when a forest is burned out and we can see to the next ridgeline, we’re more comfortable. You hit upon one other point that I find evocative: “So why do people still stop to look and take pictures of these grim, inhospitable pieces of land?” Whether it is my photos of Lawrenceville or of the Badlands, I am drawn to places that are NOT my home, places that I know I can leave if I have to or want to. But then again, being in those places makes me wonder (somewhat creepily I suppose), what if this was my home, what if I had to live here all year long, what would it do to my psyche, how creepy would I be (Edward Abbey seems to approach similar questions regarding his red rock landscape in Desert Solitaire) if this was my home? And similarly…. “What if I was the one being stalked?” Or, perhaps even more disturbing, “What if I was the psychopathic killer?”
