Your Corner of the World

Describe the landscape in your corner of the world.

If you're uncomfortable sharing details about your specific location, choose a landscape that you've visited which has made a lasting impression on your mind.

There are two parts to this thread, one which is personal and the other is interactive. Feel free to respond to one or both parts.

Personal:
1) With a mental image only, describe a specific landscape. Use your own words, in any form - a brief sentence, poetry, list of plants, etc.
2) Find some photos of the landscape that you've just described. Images can come from online searching or your own photography.
3) Do you feel that your description is accurate? Did you notice anything you had forgotten?

Interactive:
1) Reading others' descriptions: is there a place you've encountered that reminds you of their description?
2) Post a photo of that landscape.
3) Comment on any part of the experience.

I've spent the last semester diving into vegetation patterns, both on a large and fine scale. It's gotten me thinking about how people perceive the natural landscapes that surround them. It has also made me curious how much my botanical education has altered my perception of the landscapes that I visit. Has it narrowed my view or broadened it to deeper comparison? This thread is an extension of a chat discussion between Meditrina, Zweiblumen, and myself. In that discussion, we shared images and descriptions of some fascinating places.

This is meant to be a fun and interactive thread - make the most of it!
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Personal:
1) With a mental image only, describe a specific landscape. Use your own words, in any form - a brief sentence, poetry, list of plants, etc. I'm thinking of a place where I grew up, a hillside that I frequently observed while riding my bicycle but only bothered to climb as an adult. The area appears to be completely covered in green during the springtime, that verdant yet fleeting color of spring that only lasts durnig the few hours following a deep rainfall. Large rocks pop out of the green occasionally brownish red and barren, but they seem full of life somehow. Sometimes the green is darker, those mark the location of low shrubs. The green is so dense, you can see the narrow trails of brown that criscross on the mountaintop. When I see mountains like this, I feel at home.

2) Find some photos of the landscape that you've just described. Images can come from online searching or your own photography.



3) Do you feel that your description is accurate? Did you notice anything you had forgotten?
In my mind, the landscape is always at its brightest green, but this place is brown throughout the majority of seasons. I always seem to forget just how dry it can be, it's not just the rocks that are brown in this landscape.

 

I've lived in two different landscapes in my corner of the world, and a third is one I love deeply.

I go back to the area I grew up in every now and again. It is a land of salt air and conifer trees--the smell of the two mingling says home to me. I can imagine myself in a variety of places there, like walking with my family along the rocky beach, turning rocks over every so often to pluck up a small rock crab, or among the trees, looking out over the Sound, the wind whistling through the trees as sailboats slice through the water in the distance. Far, far away, over the island near ours, during the day I can see the mountains in Canada, or I can see the refineries lighting up the sky at night. When I drive north now and I reach Olympia, the smell of the salt in the air comes back, and this feeling of utter nostalgia washes over me.

Here is a picture, not mine, of a community beach two doors down from my childhood neighborhood's community beach:


Here, what breaks the space up is grass. The Willamette Valley produces enormous amounts of grass seed. The water is grass and the islands are oaks, tall oaks that clump together into groves. Oak groves have a unique shape, round like balls. One oak alone will grow round, and several oaks together will change their shape so that the grove is what is round.

This picture, not mine but from near where I went to high school, was probably taken in late summer:


Finally, where I would spend all of my time, if I could:

 

Zen, I will respond to your description first:
Interactive:
1) Reading others' descriptions: is there a place you've encountered that reminds you of their description

Two cityscapes come to mind.
2) Post a photo of that landscape.



snowy, you're next.
Interactive:
1) Reading others' descriptions: is there a place you've encountered that reminds you of their description

Yes, your description made me think of a distinct place. Though I believe the coastline that comes to my mind is a bit further south. A place where Pinus radiata is native, and tidepools are abundant - begging to be explored.
2) Post a photo of that landscape.



3) Comment on any part of the experience.
Distantly scattered landscapes can promote similar emotions. I find simiarities between these places fascinating and reassuring.

 

Your top cityscape, gg, is one that calls to me. I've been there, and right when I saw your picture, I gasped. Somewhere in a shoebox I have a similar photo.

 

1) With a mental image only, describe a specific landscape. Use your own words, in any form - a brief sentence, poetry, list of plants, etc.

• Birch
• Cedar
• Pine
• Maple
• Oak
• Braken
• Lichen

This is just a sample. A Group of Seven.

This land is ravaged with the scars left by the Ice Age: lacerations of deep lakes and far-reaching rivers, swollen scabs of stone.

It is an open land, but its forests are thick and unforgiving.

It is a cold land, but its summers are thick and unforgiving.

It is a land that resists being tamed.

It is a land that deserves to be free.

2) Find some photos of the landscape that you've just described. Images can come from online searching or your own photography.









3) Do you feel that your description is accurate? Did you notice anything you had forgotten?

I spent my childhood in places like those depicted. The images are burned into my mind.