feeling is believing, or landscape as a way of being in the world

FEELING IS BELIEVING, OR LANDSCAPE AS A WAY OF BEING IN THE WORLD

© The author 2007Journal compilation © 2007 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 219


byEdmunds Valdem7rs Bunk∑e

Bunk∑e, E.V., 2007: Feeling is believing, or landscape as a way ofbeing in the world. Geogr. Ann., 89 B (3): 219–231.

ABSTRACT. This article is work-in-progress, an orientation ofthought towards possibilities for individual human beings to di-minish the distance between outer and inner landscapes imposedby cultural norms and happenstances such as exile. The domi-nance of visual landscapes and visual perceptions is seen as a piv-otal problem, to be solved by the engagement of all the senses inlandscape discourse and formation. All the senses are engaged inearliest childhood, as they have been in ‘primitive’ societies.While returning to either a state of childhood or primitivism is animpossible dream, it is possible to edge closer to human nature byengaging and honing all the senses, especially the ‘earth-boundsenses’ of feel, smell and taste. Cultivating those senses and de-veloping discourse about them, and incorporating them into land-scape formation and enjoyment, is much more difficult than hav-ing a discourse about sight and hearing, for which there is a richand well-developed symbolic language and which can be sharedthrough various types of media. The way towards a deeper dis-course about the earth-bound senses, and the way out of the tyr-anny of the visual, is to be found in stories, as several thinkers sug-gest.

The story told is autobiographical and literary – a mode of geo-graphic writing that I developed in a 2004 book (Bunk∑e 2004a),in which the complex dilemmas of home and road were explored.This article shows how in the early 1970s I defined the individu-al’s landscape as ‘a unity in one’s surroundings perceived throughall the senses’, with imagination as the key human faculty. And Itell the story of how through complex circumstances, a visuallyand emotionally repugnant landscape became emotionally and in-tellectually attractive, with a scent, not a picture or image causingthe initial attraction. The external and internal landscapes are thusunified, resulting in a sense of timelessness and placelessness ofdeep existential significance for the person.

Key words: feeling, visual tyranny, ‘earth-bound senses’, land-scape discourse, story

As for me, I prefer that Emile have eyes in thetips of his fingers than in a candlemaker’sshop.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Everything comes alive when contradictionsaccumulate.

Gaston Bachelard

To you consciousness is subversive – becauseyour thing is the collective mind.

Tom Stoppard, Rock ‘n’ Roll

For my life three things are necessary: vast-ness, resonance, reciprocity. To the extent thatthese treasures can be acquired, to that extentI liberate myself from the shackles of narrow-ness, physical failings and exile.

Zenta Mauriµa, Pasaules v7rtos. Zviedrijasdienasgr7matas 1951–1958 (In the gates ofthe world. Sweden diaries 1951–1958).1

Landscapes and the individualThis is work-in-progress. When Gunhild Settenand Tiina Peil invited me to participate with a paperat the Lund Conference that would address thequestions, ‘what we use landscapes for, under whatcircumstances, in what ways, and for whom …[and] what landscapes do?’ I agreed, out of enthu-siasm rather than forethought. ‘What landscapesdo’ seemed, and is, such a very good question. Inaccordance with my recent humanistic-literarywork, I responded with the question: ‘Why land-scapes matter to the individual?’ – the principaltheme of this paper. But then doubts set in about theshort preparation time for the conference. Deeperdoubts followed about my ability to say anythingnew or different about feelings and meaningsbound up with landscapes – negative, indifferent,positive – that I had exfoliated from memory andresearch and had just published in a book and an es-say (Bunk∑e 2004a, b). Nevertheless, I wanted toresolve certain tensions that were raised in thosetwo works.

Thus a number of false starts, discarded themesand rhetorical props had to be endured, before afirm central theme could be established that wouldmove me beyond the work mentioned above. In thatwork I had devised the strategy of examining geo-graphic concepts autobiographically,2 or to put itdifferently, I endeavoured to illuminate the hiddengeography within a single human being (Wright,[1946] 1966, Bunk∑e 2004a, pp. 3–6). To continueon that path meant not merely doing an intellectualexercise. It meant first discovering new emotional

EDMUNDS VALDEM&RS BUNK„E

© The author 2007Journal compilation © 2007 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography220

and intellectual territories for myself before I couldattempt to add something to the wider discourse onlandscapes.

The unresolved tensions concern the human di-lemma of harmonizing home and road, which is theleitmotif of my book Geography and the Art of Life(Bunk∑e 2004a). An essay on perceiving nature’srhythms in an era of high mobility (Bunk∑e20004b) was a direct, if shorter sequel dealing withthe same issue. In the book I tried to accomplishtwo personal goals, while addressing universalgeographic and emotional dimensions: first, to di-minish by the act of writing the indelible, traumaticmemories and nightmares of wartime childhoodand flight from one’s homeland; second, to exam-ine the ‘essential paradox of human existence’(Lane 2002, p. 32), the inherently ambiguous andseemingly unresolvable tensions between homeand road – particularly exile as a perpetual being onthe road (Bunk∑e 2004a, pp. 43–56).

In the first goal I succeeded. While memories ofwar can never be altogether exorcised, by self-con-sciously putting them down on paper and examin-ing them, they can be pushed further into the back-ground of daily life.

The tension between home and road, home andexile was, and is, another matter. Although, as I re-veal in the book, I designed and built an emotion-ally and intellectually satisfying home based on thepoetic orientations of Bachelard’s intimate immen-sity (Bachelard 1969) and my life experiences, I didnot resolve the uneasy sense of still being on theroad, if not in outright exile (Bunk∑e 2004a, pp.100–115). Return to the homeland (Latvia) becamepossible in 1990, but too many years had passed,too many changes had occurred within and without.Today, native language, community and landscapeis in Latvia – a beckoning human and ‘natural’warmth. A physical and familial home is here, inAmerica, which also offers a cornucopia of far-flung and interesting and stunning landscapes, aswell as community, albeit fragmented in geograph-ic space.

I am localized, but have been unable to find anemotional connection to the universal (Lane 2002,p. 20) – at least not beyond a superficial level, whenconsidering the relationship to the immediate land-scapes of SE Pennsylvania and northern Delawarewhere we live, as well as to alluring, distant wil-derness and urban landscapes. A telling sign is thenorthern landscape of conifers and birches – manytransplanted from Maine and one even from Latvia– with which I have surrounded our Bachelardian

domicile. Even more telling is the fact that I plantedtree clusters, interspersed by small meadows, to re-semble not a parkland, but northern forest standsand openings into small meadows, with closely, ir-regularly planted trees in competition with eachother. To insure ‘naturalness’, the design was donein situ, not on paper or computer, incrementally, de-rived from many years of visual study of trees andforest landscapes.

Unlike the ancient Greeks, for whom the oikos(home) was emotionally connected to the oikumene(the known, inhabited world; Glacken 1967, pp.17–18), I, and probably most exiles (and not a few‘natives’), lack that connection. The perceptual–emotional relationship with landscapes beyond theimmediate home is not unlike the contrast that Nan-cy Doubleday draws (1992) between the Inuit andforeign explorers in the Arctic. For the Inuit, arctichome and horizon were unified because they had aprofound and complex functional and emotionalrelationship to both. For the outsiders that was notthe case. They had narrow, exploitative interests inarctic landscapes. Or to put it another way, unlikethe Inuit, the visitor’s inner and outer worlds werenot in harmony there.

It is finding harmony between inner and outerlandscapes (Lopez 1989, pp. 64–65) that I am ex-ploring in this article. Two questions are addressed:(1) how can an individual change emotional and in-tellectual relationships with outer landscapes thatare defined in overwhelmingly visual terms, im-posed by cultural norms, ‘fate’ and one’s actions?and (2) how can a visually ‘ugly’, even repulsivelandscape become a complementary part of one’sinner being through the employment of all the sens-es? These questions lead to broader, intersubjectiveimplications for landscape narratives, ‘landscapeshaping’, to use Olwig’s expression (2004, p. 42),and behaviour in landscapes, when all the sensesare deployed in defining and relating to landscapes.

It might be asked, where does this article ‘fit’within the recent blossoming of landscape studiesin geography, anthropology, philosophy, art histo-ry, literary studies and other fields? Although it isimplicitly informed by social science and evenphysical geography, it goes beyond the blurred bor-ders of social science and humanistic study (Dun-can 2000; Sooväli 2004, p. 20). Rather, it is situatedin the border area of the humanities and in art, par-ticularly literature. Although I am not writing fic-tion, it is the act of writing that leads into discoveryand analysis (Bunk∑e 2004c). This article repre-sents ‘a turn to’ the individual human being.



Importance of visual landscapesThe world asks to be seen… Just as, from thetime when Claude Monet first looked at a wa-ter lily, the water lilies of the Ile-de–Francehave been more beautiful, more splendid.

Gaston Bachelard, ‘Water lilies,or surprises of a summer’s dawn’

Finding harmony between inner and outer land-scapes is a story of escape from the emotional andintellectual tyranny of visual landscapes imposed byculture (Cosgrove 1984, pp. 27–33; Barthes 1995;Bunk∑e 2001, p. 237), politics (Thomas 1993) andgenes (Porteous 1985, p. 356) claims that ‘up to90% of our perceptual intake is visual’ and that‘much of the rest is auditory and tactile’. (See alsoVroon 1994, p. 89.) There has certainly been morebalance between the senses in eras past and in othercultures (Mumford 1961; Tuan 1974, pp. 10–11,1977; Hirsch 1995, p. 21). In some tropical rainfor-est environments the visual sense is practically use-less in deriving a sense of landscape (Gow 1995, p.43). While there is no question that visually deter-mined landscapes will continue to dominate in themodern world, it does not mean that the other sensescannot be used to form the ‘picture’.3

For me, expanding landscape perceptions andsensibilities to all the senses is a radical change thattook many years of gestation. After early childhoodI began to develop a profound delight in the visualworld and honed my visual abilities both verballyand in artistic expression. I learned ‘how to see’ inart classes for architecture students. I developedsome skill in doing pen-and-ink sketches and watercolours of urban and wilderness landscapes andused them in my work (see Fig. 1). Similarly, I be-came a fairly competent photographer by taking

countless slides for work and pleasure. I relish longtrain rides and, with rare exceptions, will never tireof looking at landscapes or seascapes. Long drivesinto America have been done for similar reasons,especially west of the 98th meridian, or north intoNew England and the Maritime Provinces of Can-ada. Many ferry crossings and journeys in Scandi-navia, and to Newfoundland and Labrador, provid-ed intense visual pleasure (especially to the Lofo-ten Islands and Labrador), although the feel of windand waves and the smells and sounds of seas andoceans was profound. Long hikes in the CascadeMountains and the Wind River Range were under-taken for adventure and the visual pleasures ofthose sublime landscapes, as were numerous wil-derness lake and river journeys by kayak or canoein British Columbia. I am especially taken byclouds. Dramatic cloud formations over the GreatPlains or over the Irbe Straits between Kurzeme(Latvia) and Saaremaa (Estonia) are to me, an ag-nostic, signs of eternity that exists in this life onEarth (Bunk∑e 2001, p. 244, 2004a).

Visual landscapes took on ever more signifi-cance with an early appreciation of landscapepaintings (also poetry involving landscapes, for,like paintings, poetry can rival painting by stimu-lating both the eye and the mind; Anonymous2006). Literary verbal evocations and descriptionsof landscapes I largely ignored, until I became acultural geographer. As I recount in Geography andthe Art of Life (2004a, pp. 36–37), interest in land-scape representation came with much early expo-sure to theatre sets and to nostalgia for rustic, north-ern homeland landscapes of forests and isolatedfarmsteads. I especially enjoy small paintings oflandscapes. Although surely this is too simplistican explanation, it seems that my preferences for

Fig. 1. Baltic sea coast, northwest-ern Latvia.Source: Sketch by the author.



small landscape paintings, with some exceptions,tend to be related to the early experiences of theatreand small places. One of my favourite landscapepainters is Jacob van Ruysdael. His ‘View of Delft’,with sunlight focused on the middle distance of therural scene is very much like a stage setting. On nu-merous train journeys, some with students, I wouldspend a two- or three-hour stopover in Amsterdamto charge to the Ruysdael room at the Rijks Muse-um, the path to which I knew exactly. The land-scapes of Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoskha and Ed-ward Hopper are particular favourites, as are thewatercolours of Turner and the landscapes of theCanadians known as the ‘Group of Seven’. Certainlarge landscape canvases arrest me as well. WhenI first saw Claude Monet’s monumental triptych ofwater lilies at the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork, I contemplated it’s cornucopia of colour forso long that I began to feel physically faint. But to-day it is David Hockney’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ and‘Pearblossom Highway’ – inspired by quantummechanics and an anti-single-point perspective at-titude (Hockney (1993, p. 112) – sees the latter – aphoto collage – as a ‘panoramic assault on Renais-sance one-point perspective’) – that always elicitsa passionate response in me. These two works areintellectual and emotional feasts. Without delvinginto my visual tastes any further, visual landscapeshave clearly dominated my private life.

It will be no surprise that they dominated pro-fessional work as well.4 Even though in my initialexplorations of nature-culture themes had been inthe foreground (I had studied the history of ideaswith C. J. Glacken), the visual landscape was al-ways an ever-present element. But in that earlywork it was largely a critically unexamined ele-ment. The exception was the issue of representa-tiveness of insiders’ attitudes and perceptions, asopposed to outsiders. Specifically I tried to uncoverself-conscious aesthetic norms concerning theearth, forest, and sea among Latvian peasants (and,coincidentally, women), using folklore as a source(Bunk∑e 1973, 1978). As hindsight tells me, I at-tributed perceptions of landscapes to the peasants,when the word or concept of ‘landscape’ never ap-pears in the thousands of folk rhymes (i.e. dainas)that I analysed. Although the peasants clearly per-ceived and evaluated their immediate physical andemotional domain holistically, with a self-con-scious, critical sense of order and beauty, they hadno concept of landscape. I had in fact committedthe very act that I had set out to avoid: the imposi-tion of an outsider’s perceptions on the insiders.

Much of my subsequent work deals implicitly orexplicitly with landscape themes, among them(without listing an entire bibliography): Hum-boldt’s efforts to establish an ‘aesthetic tradition ingeography’ (Bunk∑e 1981); landscapes and nation-alism (Bunk∑e 1990, 1992, 1999, 2001); land-scapes as surrogates for sociability in childhood;and landscape and exile, specifically the complexemotional and intellectual dilemmas presented byhome and road mentioned above (Bunk∑e 2004a).Until relatively recently, I have treated landscapelargely, but not exclusively, as a visual phenome-non in my writings. Influenced by and coming fromthe so-called Berkeley School of Geography, myapproach to landscape has straddled, to use GeorgeHenderson’s categorization of discourses aboutlandscapes (Henderson 2003), ‘Landscape asLandschaft’ (folk, community, fitness, stewardshipas some leading themes) and the ‘EpistemologicalLandscape’ (i.e. ‘landscape as the material revela-tion of human practice and thought)’.

Towards landscape as part of being: outer and inner landscapes

The inner is the outer, the outer is the inner: anold story, but who really understands it?

Iris Murdoch

Sometime in the early 1970s (Shaffer 2006a), in-fluenced by Yi-Fu Tuan’s writings (1971, 1974) andlater reinforced by Anne Buttimer’s essay on ‘life-worlds’ (1976), when discussing the concept oflandscape with students, I began to depart fromSauer’s idea of landscape as the visual, material im-press of culture on the land (or on original nature;Sauer, [1925] 1963). I was attempting to examinethe individual’s lifeworld in terms of cultural con-texts within which the individual lives a geographiclife. I taught and discussed (and still do) landscapeas a unity in one’s surroundings, perceived throughall the senses. I also incorporated imagination asthe single most important human ability in sensingand interpreting landscapes in this way. I was plac-ing the individual human being in geographicspace, who is not only ‘always in place’ (Casey1996), but also always in landscape(s).

This was a different approach from the critical,epistemological path taken by other geographers,such as Tuan, Harvey, Daniels and Cosgrove, whowere drawing conclusions that ‘The irreduciblyvisual aspect of landscape has made it a source ofdeep distrust’ (Daniels and Cosgrove 1993, p. 59)



– a distrust that Olwig substantiated in his exami-nation of the historically varied meanings of theterm ‘landscape’ (1993) and his major study of thehistoric usages of landscape in exercising politicalpower (2002). I too distrusted visual landscapes,but for me that distrust came largely from followingliterary/poetic sources. They were more congenialin that they led me back towards concrete, individ-ual experiences of earth, waters, air and living, non-living beings. I could not have written Geographyand the Art of Life had I not oriented myself in thatdirection.

In 1991 a chance discovery in a bookshop win-dow in Covent Garden in London was a major in-spiration in my search to give more substance tothe notion of landscape as a unity that an individ-ual apprehends through all the senses. It was Di-ane Ackerman’s The Natural History of the Senses(Ackerman 1991). Drawing on literary and scien-tific sources, as well as on history and cross-cul-tural references, the book opened wide the worldof the senses. Especially important was her idea ofthe ‘earth-bound senses’ – smell, touch, taste –and the ‘sky-bound senses’ of sight and hearing.The limitation on discourse posed by the earth-bound senses was a key idea that I came to linkwith my idea of landscape. Yi-Fu Tuan has writtenfrequently and quite extensively about the senseson a number of occasions (1974, 1977, pp. 146–147, 1982, pp. 114–136), but perhaps it was hisgreater interest in space, place and communitythat prevented me from pursuing these themes fur-ther. A further influence was also Lewis Mum-ford’s The City in History (Mumford 1961) inwhich there is a substantial evocation of the sen-sory richness that was the medieval city of Europe.But it was Ackerman’s ‘earthiness’ that reallytook hold of my imagination. Hers were strong ar-guments for the experience of landscape throughall the senses.

Visual landscapes became still less importantwith Kearney’s (1988) analysis of the negative im-pact of a myriad images that bombard the modernimagination. Liberation from the visual vortex canonly come through narratives, especially in storyform, argues Kearney. N. Scott Momaday’s HouseMade of Dawn (Momaday 1966) – a novel that ex-amines a Native American’s tormented search forreconnection with his native land – although redo-lent with exquisitely wrought verbal imagery, ledaway from the concept of landscape (the word ap-pears only two or three times) towards sensing anineffable wholeness of land and sky.

Major discoveries on the path away from the vis-ual have been the writings of Barry Lopez (e.g. Arc-tic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a NorthernLandscape (1986), Crossing Open Ground (1989),About this Life. Journeys on the Threshold of Mem-ory (1998), Winter Count 1999)). The entire corpusof his fictional and non-fictional works has led meto think and feel differently about landscapes, es-pecially concerning their ineffable aspects. For thepurposes here, his essay ‘Landscape and narrative’in Crossing Open Ground (Lopez 1989) is the mostsignificant. There are two pertinent themes in thatessay: (1) the idea of two landscapes, ‘one outsidethe self, and the other within’, and (2) the idea ofbringing the two landscapes into harmony withinthe human being, for the sake of well-being, sanityand morality.

Lopez’s ideas of the external landscape begin vis-ually, in Sauerian terms (Sauer has been part of hisrather wide reading in geography): ‘The externallandscape is the one we see – not only the line andcolor of the land and its shading at different times ofthe day. But also its plants and animals in season, itsweather, its geology, the record of its climate and ev-olution’ (Lopez 1989, p. 64). But then the ‘picture’departs from Sauer and brings in the other senses:

If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the SonoranDesert you will feel a mounding and rolling ofsand and silt beneath your foot that is distinc-tive. You will anticipate the crumbling of thesedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as yourhand reaches out, and in that tangible evidenceyou will sense a history of water in the region.Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in apaloverde bush – the resiliency of the twig un-der the bird, that precise shade of yellowish-green against the milk-blue sky, the flutteringwhirr of the arriving sparrow, are what I meanby ‘the landscape.’ Draw on the smell of thecreosote bush, or clack stones together in thedry air. Feel how light is the desiccated drop-ping of the cangaroo rat…. These are all ele-ments of the land, and what makes the land-scape comprehensible are the relationships be-tween them. One learns a landscape finally notby knowing the name or identity of everythingin it, but by perceiving the relationships in it…

(Lopez 1989, p. 64)

The internal landscape which Lopez (1989, p. 65)describes is ‘a kind of projection within the personof a part of the exterior landscape’. This includes



scientific knowledge of relationships, ‘and othersthat are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter’slight falling on a particular kind of granite, or theeffect of humidity on the blackpoll warbler’s burstof song’. Purpose and order of the relationships,‘however inscrutable, is a tenet of evolution’. The‘mind’, made up of ‘speculations, intuitions, andformal ideas’, is an interior landscape that too hasevolved purposes and order. Lopez believes that‘The shape and character of these relationships ina person’s thinking…are deeply influenced bywhere on this earth one goes, what one touches’,whether in Nature or in a city. The ‘character andsubtlety’ of a landscape becomes part of being.Lopez concludes that ‘the shape of the individualmind is affected by land as it is by genes’.

Lopez’s landscape sensibilities include sensesother than the visual, even though the visual re-mains an essential sense, especially in leading toand interpreting relationships. Noteworthy is thefact that on several occasions he separates landfrom landscape, thus bringing us back to the orig-inal source of the notion of landscape.

Lopez’s second idea, namely bringing the twolandscapes into harmony, is based on the culturalbehaviours of the Navajo and other ‘native peoples’(Lopez 1989, pp. 66–67). The Navajo regard theexterior landscape as ‘organized according to prin-ciples or laws or tendencies beyond human con-trol’, containing ‘an integrity that is beyond humananalysis and unimpeachable’.

The exterior landscape is the source of harmonyboth for the society and the individual. Order of theuniverse is derived ‘from observations and medita-tions on the exterior landscape’. In turn, materialand immaterial cultural behaviours are derivedfrom the perceived order. Ritual serves to manifestpower of the universe in architecture, art, costumeand vocabulary. Uninterrupted mindfulness ‘toboth the obvious (scientific) and ineffable (artistic)orders of the local landscape’ provides the basis for‘indigenous philosophy – metaphysics, ethics,epistemology, aesthetics, and logic’. In turn, eachindividual orders ‘his [or her] interior landscape ac-cording to the exterior’ one. Mental health and mo-rality is contingent on succeeding (Lopez 1989, pp.66–67).

Harmonizing interior-exterior landscapes in the contemporary worldHow can a contemporary human being harmonizeinterior-exterior landscapes? How can the two

landscapes be harmonized where we live? It is aproblem that I (and many others) face every time Iventure forth beyond my Bachelardian cum imita-tion Latvian landscape, which is situated in a small,semi-rural area, in the heart of Megalopolis of theEastern Seaboard of the USA. Within three or fourmiles from it, it is difficult to imagine harmony onfour-lane highways, traffic jam, shopping centres,major intersections, warehousing and manufactur-ing areas, and everywhere – ubiquitous, suburbantracts so vast that they are like the work of an un-bridled force of Nature – the force of human nature.I do connect with New York City, with its oceanichum, but it is a restless city, in ‘high fever’, as Platowould say, and not a landscape for mindfulness.5 Ihave never absorbed it into myself the way I haveBerkeley, the centre of R9ga, or the cities of Copen-hagen, Paris and London.

Lopez believes that shared stories told within aparticular land can affect such unity. As he writes(Lopez 1989, p. 66), ‘With certain stories certainindividuals may experience a deeper, more pro-found sense of well-being’. He thinks that this iswhat ‘rests at the heart of storytelling as an elevatedexperience among aboriginal peoples. It resultsfrom bringing two landscapes together.’ But formodern people this is possible too in wilderness sit-uations (in this particular case, Alaska). If a storytold is set in the particular landscape where the peo-ple find themselves, then it might have the ‘powerto reorder a state of psychological confusionthrough contact with the pervasive truth of those re-lationships we call “the land”’ (Lopez 1989, pp.67–68).

It is Lopez’s belief that stories can fill in for themissing rituals that the Navajo possess for bringingtogether the two landscapes. Having partaken ofsimilar experiences around camp fires in the wildlandscapes of British Columbia and elsewhere, Icertainly agree. So, implicitly, does Bachelard inhis Psychoanalysis of Fire (1964), in which he ex-amines, phenomenologically, the effect on humanimagination of being gathered around a small fire.Moreover, by emphasizing the story rather than re-produced images of landscapes, Lopez is in accordwith the philosopher Kearney and his belief thatstories are the only way out of the superficialities ofan image-laden world.

C. L. Martin, in his very fine In the Spirit of theEarth (Martin 1992), takes a different tack to har-monizing with landscapes. His is a book that focus-es on North America in terms of outsiders – himselfand his Anglo-Saxon cultural milieu – and insiders,



the original native inhabitants, whom, like manyothers, he regards as offering insights into lateStone Age cultural mores and sensitive, harmoni-ous relationships with landscapes. Martin speaks oftwo different languages that cover the land: the na-tive and the newcomer. While, the native has de-rived her language from the land and its beings –the coyote, lynx, moose, wind, earth – with whomshe has conversed and to whom she has listened forthousands of years, the newcomers neither listennor converse with the land and its non-human in-habitants. Martin has made an effort to listen andconverse, including with the traces in the landscapeleft by Indian ancestors. Perhaps his most profoundevocation is the sense of being watched in an emptycanyon, and being addressed by unseen but felt be-ings.

Martin’s insights are very attractive to one whogrew up in Europe with dreams of Indians (Bunk∑e2004a). I too have experienced the sense of beingwatched on a tiny, moist stream delta at the headof a fjord in British Columbia, never reached bythe sun, covered by myriad animal and bird tracks.And every time I sleep in a tent in grizzly bearcountry, I sleep uneasily, knowing that I am beingscented and heard, and ever listening for the slight-est sound of bears. But that is in grizzly bear coun-try. One is in their landscapes, lured by visualspectacles and the promise of adventure. How dowe sense beings and varied sensory aspects inlandscapes closer to ‘civilization’? Although I ex-pose my students to native thought about the land,I also make the caveat that it is an unrealisticdream in a world connected by e-mails, cell-phones, instant messaging and, increasingly, vir-tual experiences.

Looking to native peoples has been a commontheme ever since Rousseau proposed the idea of the‘savage’, living in innocent and free harmony withnature (Rousseau, [1762] 1911). However, Rous-seau did not think that it is possible for modern hu-man beings to re-enter the world of the noble sav-age (as Martin intimates is possible), but he felt thatit is possible to find nature within ourselves, withchildhood as a critical stage in that discovery. Hiswas an effort to change the way in which childrenwere educated. Most significant for the centraltheme of this essay is Rousseau’s substantial exam-ination of the full development of all the senses asa way to return to human nature. I think that hereinlies one of the keys to establishing harmonies be-tween inner and outer landscapes in the contempo-rary world. The other is the story.

In my search to reconcile home and road, to con-nect home with the wider external world, I ex-plored (Bunk∑e 2004a) my own childhood learn-ing about the sea coast and farming landscapes ofLatvia. It showed that before I knew about land-scapes in formal, visual ways, and became mes-merized by images of homeland landscapes in ex-ile and before I knew about sublime and pictur-esque landscapes, I knew landscapes through allthe senses (Bunk∑e 2004a). They were multi-sen-sory seascapes and rural landscapes of a Latvianchildhood – experiences which were overwhelmedby the learned cultural norms of visual landscapesand associations.

With few exceptions, it is no more possible foran adult to re-enter the world of childhood as it isto live a life of noble savagery (although someoneonce said – perhaps it was Colette? – that she or hewho has lost connections with childhood is lessthan human). It is possible, however, to recover oneaspect of ‘savages’ and children, i.e. to return self-consciously, and ultimately unselfconsciously, tohoning the use of all the senses (and putting all thesenses on as equal a footing with vision as possiblein thinking, caring for and forming landscapes). Es-pecially to pay attention to the earth senses oftouch, smell and hearing, and to the body as awhole6 – the senses that most directly link externaland internal landscapes.

It will take a much longer work to fully explorethe earth senses. What follows is a story of how,through the sense of smell, I was able to invert theemotional repugnance, uneasiness, even fear, of avisual landscape that I had regarded as the epitomeof ugliness and symbol of the extremes of exile.

A scent of sagewhat solacecan be struck from rock to make heart’s wastegrow green again? Who’d walk in this bleakplace?

(Sylvia Plath‘Winter Landscape, With Rooks’)

Nevada: it was the ugliest, the most forbidding oflandscapes. Its stark, vast emptiness, dryness andlack of green colour, in summer or winter signalledextreme exile, extreme contrast to Latvian and Eu-ropean landscapes. The exception were the darkgreen bands of forests in the upper reaches ofmountains, the latter ranged like gigantic waves atright angles, more or less, across the path of the



East–West highway that I/we used every year to goback and forth between the West coast and East (thereference is to the so-called Basin and Rangephysiographic province). Driving through thislandscape alone brought forth an interminablesense of longing and loneliness, and a constantwish to escape from it as quickly as possible. Thedominant colours of that landscape ranged fromblack, to dark brown, to light brown, to brilliantwhite in some of the flat valley bottoms (i.e. playas)and sometimes, brilliant blues of the sky. The raretowns along the way were unkempt, run-down anddusty, blending imperceptibly into the desert waste.They were utterly devoid of signs of the work of aloving mind and hand, as one sees in Europe orNew England.

Desolation was inscribed in the faces of wait-resses who served coffee and cheap, tasteless foodat the eateries (‘Eats’) amid shiny, slowly clankingslot machines. Their faces were prematurely aged,wrinkled into a fine grain, their voices hoarse fromcigarette smoke and whiskey. They lived at the endof the world, living ghost towns in ghost towns. Ina journal entry I referred to this as a ‘landscape ofbroken dreams’.

The dominant plant in that landscape was sage-brush, which, with its crooked stems and seeminglyunfinished form I considered the ugliest, most for-lorn of plants. It was the iconic plant of desolation.It is a plant that is ubiquitous in the arid West ofNorth America.

Once I drove up an empty valley until I came toa trailer with various kinds of junk strewn about. Bythe door, on a metal kitchen chair, sat a wizened oldfellow who seemed welcoming. We struck up aconversation about his life in the sagebrush desert.After a while I asked: ‘Why haven’t you planted alittle garden to make it more homely?’ (In mymind’s eye I also pictured lilac bushes adjacent tofarm houses in Latvia and to not a few houses in cit-ies). He did not answer. He merely raised his rightarm and swept it along the horizon line that markedthe end of the valley. I felt sorry for him, for I wasseeing only desolation. I did not grasp that the en-tire landscape was his garden. His landscape per-ceptions were diametrically opposed to mine. Atthat time some of my teaching involved Europeangardens as expressions of ideas. I also served on de-sign juries for a Rome-trained, Swiss-born land-scape architect. On my mind were landscapes withassociations and particular ideas of the beautiful,sublime and picturesque (Appleton 1975).

What’s more, I was doing what I describe in the

afore mentioned essay on Nature’s rhythms in anera of displacement (Bunk∑e 2004b) – looking forelements of landscapes that in some way connectedme to what was experienced in a Latvian child-hood; and always using Latvia as a visual baselinefor drawing visual comparisons. I was clinging in-tensely to ‘the realm of mediated meaning’ (Geertz1973, p. 89, cited in Sheldrake 2001, p. 3). Indeed,I was offered an early opportunity to step out of thevisual world by an unplanned camp deep in a first-growth forest of Douglas firs, next to a tiny streamin the Cascade Range of Washington State. Thecamp was a disappointment, for we had planned onyet one more evening view of a sunset over a mir-ror-like lake in a setting of snow and ice-clad peaks.It was only recently (Bunk∑e 2004a) that I realizedthe importance of that experience – a night filledwith the quiet murmur of the little stream, the quietof the primeval forest, which a single roar of a cou-gar made even more quiet.

On a solo drive back East, a sudden impulse ledme to break off a small branch of sagebrush. It wasa tourist’s wish to have a souvenir from a place vis-ited – that of ‘The West’. I put it behind the back seatand forgot about it. On the first rainy day it suddenlyfilled the space of my small old convertible with itsuniquely sweetish scent. ‘The West’ was alive.Smell is of course termed the ‘memory sense’, a fa-miliar smell triggering memories of experiencedplaces and landscapes (Tuan 1974; Porteous 1985;Ackerman 1991; Engen 1991; Vroon 1994). There-after, every time it rained, the smell of sage wouldreappear. I do not recall how long that lasted, but itreminded me in a general way of Western land-scapes as I was making a place in the East. It did notchange my feelings or ideas about Nevada. It wasstill an ugly, forlorn landscape.

Then I encountered the scent of sage for real in aNevada landscape after recent rain. Everywhere Iwalked, the clear, silken, late afternoon desert air wasfilled with its delicate aroma. It was a most perfect,Edenic feeling, with a golden sun warming one’sbare skin like a caress. Suddenly I took great interestin the lowly, scruffy plants and their little yellow andpurple blossoms. The scent of sage was a mild yetpersistent presence, which connected me to the vast,empty landscape like the palpable substance that itwas. A change in attitude toward Nevada landscapeshad begun in me. This was not ‘detached, distant ob-servation and visual appropriation… a landscapeway of seeing’ (Cosgrove 1984, p. 267). I was ab-sorbing the landscape with every breath; sensing itthrough all my senses. Even visually!



Just as photograph of spectacular mountainscenery lures one into the mountains, that first scentof sage experienced years ago lured me into thehigh deserts of Nevada. In spite of what I had feltabout its landscapes before, I started to seek out itsmost desolate roads and to camp in its empty val-leys. Driving through it became leisurely journeys,to be savoured as often as possible, especiallyalone. This new found affection culminated in aNovember 2004 camping trip with my son and ourtwo dogs, when we headed into the most forgottencorner of Nevada – the NW corner, which is part ofthe Black Rock Desert and which connects to theModoc Lava Plateau of NE California.

Visually it is the most mundane of landscapes.But an aura of mystery came from a small scatter-ing of irregularly shaped hot springs, which gaveoff steam and a faint sulphuric smell. There was adusting of snow on the ground. We had broughtwood for a camp fire and huddled around it in thesub-freezing temperature, keeping a tight watch onour dogs, for coyotes were trying to lure them away.All night long the landscape was filled with theirhigh-pitched yips and whimpers as they circled ourcamp, feigning injury. Their aim was to lure ourdogs into going out to them and to become theirmeal. We told stories about our lives and stories thatothers had told. In the morning condensationdripped down on us from the peaks of our respec-tive tents, while their outsides were coated with athin film of frost. We were shivering before the firewas lit. It was a scented, aural and atmosphericlandscape that night and morning.

We were there just to be there. And to walk. Weneither hunt nor fish, nor ride horses or bicycles.Walking in that landscape is to walk on a rough sur-face of stones (i.e. desert pavement), and to brushagainst the coarse feel of sagebrush. It is to walkinto placelessness, without a goal. There were notrails, save those left by the irregular meanderingsof jackrabbits and wild horses. The inner and outerlandscapes had merged in complete harmony. Foronce there was no goal to reach – miles to hike, pad-dle or drive. Just being in that wholeness was allthat mattered.

I had discovered a landscape for which I have af-fection, if not love. I cannot yet fully grasp thischange of heart, but it is a landscape within my heart– an internalized external landscape, grasped wholethrough all the senses. It is a very important connec-tion with a vast external landscape, and in that senseit means the relative ending of exile. And the endingof endless comparisons of one landscape with an-

other. I have seen the high deserts and steppes of Ne-vada for their own sake. It is not quite my ‘geograph-ical double’, as Death Valley was for Yi-Fu Tuan(2004, p. 19), but it is part of my oikumene. It islargely free of prior associations, nationalistic oraesthetic, nor of the cowboy culture, with which Ne-vada is associated. It is a placeless landscape (a ma-jor realization for me, who was influenced by TedRelph’s (1976) provocative book). When combinedwith timelessness, it transports the individual far be-yond the medium of hyper-civilization into a realmthat opens one’s being to the landscape – to its reali-ties. A holy landscape for an agnostic. It is not quitethe experience of a child before he learned aboutlandscapes. Still, it is a naive experience of the sens-es, a kind of ‘innocence of the eye’, except that allthe senses are innocent. Feeling a landscape in thisway, as Hirsh (2005) says of poetry, is to ‘deliveryour self back to yourself’.7

PostscriptThe sweetness of the fields unspeakable –

(Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler)

The first part of the title of this article, ‘Feeling isbelieving’, is an obvious transmutation of the oldsaw, ‘Seeing is believing’. It is not in the scope ofthis work to delve into the issues of seeing as a lessobjective sense than touch. My purpose in choosingthat part of the title was to use feel (or touch) –sometimes referred to as the ‘truth sense’ (Acker-man 1991) – as an entrée into the world sensed bythe senses other than sight; and obviously to intro-duce feelings and emotions into the relationshipwith landscapes. Feeling refers not only to the sens-es but to a human being’s inner life. According toDamasio (2003, pp. 28–30), in a human being emo-tions precede feelings. Emotions are often superfi-cial and may be on public display. Feelings, on theother hand, are within the human being, they mightbe hidden, and they are ‘the most private propertyof the organism in whose brain they occur’ ‘Emo-tions are based on reactions that are vital to surviv-al’, but feelings ‘form the bedrock of our minds’.They are the essence of being.

My story of the change of heart about Nevadadesert landscapes is a story of feelings leading toemotions, both in the initial negative reactions tothose landscapes, as well as the radical change ofheart (it is a subject for further investigation).

The second part of the title – ‘landscape as a wayof being in the world’ – was inspired by the now



general recognition that the ideas, images and re-alities of landscapes carry historic political, socialand economic injustices, more often than not per-petrated by outsiders on insiders who live and workthe land. The specific inspiration came from DenisCosgrove’s idea of landscape not as a picture – avisually derived ‘unity and coherence’ – but as aprocess (Cosgrove 1984, pp. 32, 268); and fromDon Mitchell’s linking of landscape and justice(Mitchell 2003).

Whatever cultural, social, political and econom-ic processes may have formed the thinking, repre-sentation and images of landscapes, as well as theformation of physical landscapes themselves, theyhave been and continue to be important in individ-ual lives, whether they are urban, rural or ‘wild’.For some they may be largely unselfconsciousgivens or backgrounds; for others (such as myself),an integral, self-conscious part of their being – ide-ally a harmonious relationship between internaland external landscapes.

Perhaps the word ‘landscape’ should be discard-ed, in light of the many misleading encrustationsthat it has carried as a culturally ‘produced’ con-cept. In light of what I have argued above, the an-swer is ‘no’. What has been shown in terms of thesingle human being represents, to use Olwig’s con-ceptualization (Olwig 1996, p. 645), a ‘substantiveunderstanding’ and feeling for landscapes – not‘landscape as scenic text’, but story, in which all thesenses come into play.

I believe in its continued usefulness as its lim-itations and historic biases become better andmore widely understood, especially by peoplewho think about and work in and with landscapes.After all, it does provide a definite orientation ofthought and being (Bachelard 1969) that is dis-tinct from ideas of nature, ecology, environment,space, place and so on. It can represent a thorough-ly humanistic idea and action, provided that all thesenses can be engaged in discourses about and re-alities of landscapes. Landscape as picture andimage is the most difficult to overcome. We alltreasure sight and it will almost always be a partof the experience of landscape, even when the oth-er senses may be just as engaged. Cosgrove pro-vides an example of the difficulty. As he writesabout the challenge of the idea of landscape (Cos-grove 1984, p. 270):

underneath the ideology of sight, distanceand separation implicit in the landscape idea

there remains to give force to the image [myitalics] our own inalienable experience ofhome, of life and of the diurnal and seasonallife.

Images will always be linked to vision. Experi-ences of home, life and the seasons can be con-veyed in depth mainly by stories that explore andshare these experiences derived especiallythrough the earthbound senses.8 Stories take timeand listening, and they must be true, even whensometimes they may seem improbable, as was amorality and mystery tale told by Lopez about awolverine and a man in a snow-covered Alaskanlandscape (Lopez 1989). The earth-bound sensesof smell, touch, taste and body sense (proprio-ception or kinesthesia) are best shared throughstories, for they cannot be broadcast as cansounds and images, and they lack the rich sym-bolic and verbal precision with which humanscommunicate visual and aural experiences.Clearly there is a difficult challenge in bringingthe earth-bound senses into discourse (and ulti-mately into landscape statutes and planning, use,protection and enjoyment). It is especially diffi-cult to find a common language for smell, the ‘in-articulate sense’ (Smith 1989, pp. 94–133). You‘have to be there’ to experience the feel of boul-der-hopping up a mountain stream, to feel andsmell a sagebrush landscape, or to hear, late in theevening, cable car cables humming beneath thesurface of a city street. Scents may of course bebottled or collected and shipped anywhere (e.g.the needles of balsam firs from the State ofMaine). But the physical feel of a landscape can-not be bottled or shipped. As Yi-Fu Tuan (1977,p. 18) writes: ‘An object or place achieves con-crete reality when our experience of it is total…through all the senses as well as with the activeand reflective mind.’ That is not an adequate rea-son, however, to largely avoid discourse about allthe senses, and thus avoid incorporating theminto the shaping of landscapes. While there maybe visually stunning, designed landscapes – I.M.Pei’s glass pyramid and reflecting pools for theLouvre come to mind – they also suffer from ste-rility. By addressing all the senses in design andplanning, there will be more possibilities for out-er and inner landscapes to coalesce in the humanbeing. In a world saturated with images, this is atale told with the intent to bring us back to oursenses.



Sayings of the BlindFeeling is believing.Mountains don’t exist, but their slopes do.Little people have low voices.All things, even the rocks, make a little noise.The silence back of all sound is called ‘the sky.’There is a big stranger in the sky called the Sun.He doesn’t speak to us but puts out a hand.Night opens a door into the cellar –You can smell it coming.On Sundays everyone stands further apart.Velvet feels black.Meeting cement is never easy.What do they mean when they say night is gloomy?Edison didn’t invent much.Whenever you wake up it’s morning.Names have a flavor.

William Stafford (1998)

Notes1. The author is responsible for translations from the Latvian.2. The manner of writing is literary. David Lowenthal (1961,

1965, 1968) was the immediate inspiration for this practice. Itwas Montaigne (1910) who initiated the modern tradition ofsuch writing – a tradition that is not commonly a part of geo-graphic practice. I am also using personal experience as ameans to access and elucidate geographic sensibilities and toilluminate a human lifeworld (Buttimer 1976). It represents acontinuous feedback between experience, thought and newexperience, from which new and richer individual life is cre-ated. Instead of distancing the self from the landscape, themain thing is to have as small a gap as possible. Moreover,the act of writing is for me, as for many other authors, an actof discovery of the world and the self. It is an act of noticing afleeting impression of the senses, noting it, then excavating itin depth, as truthfully as is humanly possible. And althoughthe experiences of landscapes, events and self that I delve intomay have the unique colouring of an individual author, thethemes that I describe – childhood, war, flight, exile andsearch for home – are universal human archetypes.

3. Preponderance of the visual can be overstated. As Hirschpoints out (1995, p. 21), It is a ‘common-sense claim thatthe visual is the primary property of (landscape) pictures.Rather, the visual articulates differentially with the othersense modalities, depending on the precise social and histor-ical context.’

4. A former student recently described my efforts at that time(Shaffer 2006b):

As for how you influenced me, the architecture connec-tion is obvious [the writer is an architect]. But the under-tow…current… etc., is how you taught us to look at theworld. Before I met you, I was a kid whose public schoolexperience was a result of Sputnik shock… and its obses-sion with math and science. Extra curricularly [sic], popculture offered little that was neither melodrama or mate-rialism… yet another explanation of the popularity ofrock-n-roll? Yet, somehow you pounded into us the infi-nitely fascinating notion that art and culture should bejust as crucial for ‘survival’ as bread and water…. Thatthat [sic] which cannot be ‘quantified’ might not only ex-ist, but also reveal or yield great value… I have devoted

much or most of my life to searching for or trying to cre-ate this ‘strange’ sense of beauty that many may neverconsider unless in a museum.

5. I owe the notion of ‘mindfulness’ to Jordan Green, a formerstudent who wrote a paper on that theme.

6. The body is a sixth sense. Not a mystical sixth sense – aphysical sense, with the entire body as a sensor. Accordingto Oliver Sacks (1987, pp. 70–71), it was once called ‘mus-cle sense.’ Today it is still commonly called kinesthesia –‘the sense of movement.’ However, Sacks prefers

‘proprioception,’ less euphonious, because it implies asense of what is ‘proper’ – that by which the body knowsitself, and has itself as a ‘property.’ One may be said to‘own’ or ‘possess’ one’s body – at least its limbs andmoveable parts – by virtue of a constant flow of informa-tion, arising ceaselessly, throughout life, from the mus-cles, joints and tendons. One has oneself, one is oneself,because the body knows itself, confirms itself, at alltimes, by this sixth sense. I wondered how much of theabsurd dualism of philosophy since Descartes mighthave been avoided by a proper understanding of ‘propri-oception.’ Perhaps indeed such an insight was hoveringin the great mind of Leibnitz, when he spoke of ‘minuteperceptions’ intermediating between body and soul.

As an example of minute perceptions, Sacks speaks of theinherent difficulty of separating the feel of the movement ofan arm from sight. ‘They are so naturally associated that oneis not used to distinguishing one from the other.’ But withclosed eyes, the tiniest movement may be felt (see alsoBerthoz 2000).

7. Curiously enough, the visual power of this landscape is enor-mous for me, as was demonstrated during a recent flight toR9ga, which required changing planes at Kastrup airport inCopenhagen. After a long, claustrophobic ‘red-eye’ fromNew York, while wandering around that well-designed air-port, there, through my bleary eyes, overhead I saw a hugeblack and white photograph of what looked like Nevada. Adirt road was running off into a vast, empty distance, fringedby dark mountain ranges. There were intimations of sage, butI could not be certain. It did not matter. I contemplated it for along time, oblivious of the crowds of that busy airport wash-ing around me. There was only the Nevada landscape. Thescent of sage was powerful. Claustrophobia of the night be-fore was gone.

8. Oliver Sacks, a clinical neurologist, who has studied how theblind compensate for the loss of sight (Sacks 2003), tells, forexample, of a landscape that is revealed by the acutely devel-oped sense of hearing. A blind person may discern the soundthat rain makes on different small features in the landscape,such as a garden path, a lawn, bushes in the garden, and thefence around the garden. As an informant tells him, ‘Rain hasa way of bringing out the contours of everything.’ Hearing,‘the geographic sense’ (Ackerman 1991) is much more high-ly developed in the blind. We all can hear rain falling on theglass of a skylight, splashing on a lake, or dripping heavilyand irregularly from a maple or an oak. Hearing rain fallingon a fence is difficult, if not impossible, at least for me.

Edmunds Valdem7rs Bunk∑eDepartment of GeographyUniversity of DelawareNewark, Delaware 19716USAE-mail: [email protected]



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feeling is believing, or landscape as a way of being in the world

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