Ecology, Landscape, Nature

Texts – John Dixon Hunt, “Reading and Writing the Site” (1992), Rebecca Solnit, “The Orbits of Earthly Bodies” (2003), Timothy Morton, excerpt from The Ecological Thought (2010)

John Dixon Hunt, “Reading and Writing the Site” (1992)

1) What is “second nature”, according to the Roman writer Cicero? What other term could
be used as a synonym for “second nature”, according to John Dixon Hunt? Why is this
kind of nature a “second” nature? What is “first”? (pp. 131-32)

• Second nature is “all of the elements which men and women introduce into the physical world to make it more habitable, to make it serve their purposes.”
• A synonym could be an augmented nature, derivative nature or mediated worlds.
• This is a second nature as the things built upon the land came second to the land itself.
• First nature is the untouched land e.g. the wilderness

2) What is “third nature”? Why do you think this is “third”? i.e. why is “third nature” said to “go beyond” or be an advance or development upon “second nature”?

• Third nature is things like gardens where nature has been carefully curated and designed
• I think this is “third” because its a form of going back to the original first nature but because it is intentional and designed it isn’t first nature.
• It goes beyond second nature because its purpose is more for pleasure over utility

3) What does John Dixon Hunt say is the main point he is trying to make when he brings up the terms first, second, and third nature? What do these terms tell us about the human relation to nature? (132)

• “The point to emphasise here is the fashion in which first nature has constantly been processed for human consumption, either into second or into second and then third natures.”
• This tells us that humans are always processing the landscape to see what it can give us in either functionality or beauty. What more can we get out of our landscape. It is a very selfish mindset.

4) What is the “picturesque”? (p. 132) What does this word mean in common parlance?
What does it mean in relation to the history of landscape design? Look it up online and
find out as much as you can about it.

• The picturesque is “a mode of processing the physical world for consumption or for our greater comfort.
• In common parlance it means something visually attractive. A picture perfect scene.
• In relation to the history of landscape design, designing has been influenced by the expectation that the end result is “picturesque”

5) What is the “sublime”? (p. 132) What does this word mean in common parlance? What does it mean in relation to the history of art and philosophy? Look it up online and find out as much as you can about it.

• Sublime is a term used for the features of nature that are ‘terrifying and threatening’ to make them more manageable mentally and culturally.
• Today it means of great excellence
• Sublime in the history of art and philosophy has been deemed an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/sublime

6) What is a garden? How does John Dixon Hunt define the garden, on p. 133? (Clue: What does the word “milieu” mean? What is its etymological/original meaning? Look this up.)

• A garden is a piece of land where plants and nature has been curated and intentionally placed for the benefit of humans.
• “Gardens are, if not ways of actually coming to terms with the first and second natures, at least retrospective ways of registering ways on how we have come to terms with them.”
• Milieu means a person’s social environment
• The etymological/original meaning is middle place

SOME KEY WORDS / CONCEPTUAL TOOLKIT from Dixon Hunt’s article
First nature | Second nature | Third nature
Cultural landscape
The Picturesque
The Sublime

Rebecca Solnit, “The Orbits of Earthly Bodies” (2003)

1) What is the great irony about living or holidaying in the countryside that Solnit points
out in the first few paragraphs of her article?

The irony is that she is constantly leaving the place she’s staying. Driving to run errands, see friends or sight see.

2) Solnit is trying to burst some of our illusions about the countryside. What are some of
the common illusions that we have about living or holidaying in the countryside?

Some illusions are that the country side is more of a natural way of living. That you are able to slow down and escape from it all when in reality that only happens for part of the time. That time ends every time you jump in the car to do something practical.

3) What are ranchettes? What does Solnit mean when she says that “ranchettes seem to
preserve the frontier individualism of every-nuclear-unit-for-itself; they’re generally
antithetical to the ways in which community and density consolidate resources”? (334)

Ranchette – A small ranch or large home lot, often on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area and just past the planned neighbourhoods.

Ranchettes are the country version of the suburbs which people commute out of to their “real communities, jobs, research and resources”. Lifestyle blocks for people who want the space but have no intention to work the land. Solnit is trying to communicate that these are ranchettes are counter productive. they put strain on facilities that were designed to cater for their immediate community not the wider outskirts of the area. It takes a-lot of resources without any real contribution.

4) What is the “new urbanism”? (334 bottom) Look this up online and find out as much as
you can about this movement. Why is Solnit ambivalent about the new urbanism?

New urbanism is an ‘urban design movement which promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighborhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types’. – wikipedia

Solnit is ambivalent because on one hand it provides an opportunity to create accessible ‘public luxury and pedestrian space’ and bring back a sense of community as neighbours mingle in their day to day but on the other hand most of the US is designed to “make driving a necessity” and these people on the outer areas of a new urbanism community would be left isolated from the community.

5) According to Solnit, how have we tended to define nature? What’s wrong with this
way of defining nature? (p. 335)

We have tended to define nature as ‘things to look at’. The fault in this way of thinking is we as human beings are natural so everything we create, evolve and develop is natural as it steamed from us. ‘Natural’ should be were we are comfortable, able to sustain ourselves and where your ‘scale is adequate’.

6) Why do you think Solnit compares city activities (shopping, people-watching) to hunting and gathering in the wilderness? (p. 335 middle) Why do you think she says that New York City might be the most natural space in all of America? (p. 335 top)
What is she trying to do to the way we think of cities?

• I think Solnit compares these things as they are essentially the same things when you break them down. You are looking for food and sustenance, keeping an eye out for danger, companionship or safety and replenishing supplies to comfortably survive.
• New York might be the most natural place in America as there are no social, economical or cultural barriers stopping people from inhabiting the same space. This means you get all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life mixing and rubbing shoulders with each other every day.
• Solnit is trying to shift our way of thinking about cities being an unnatural concrete jungle to a natural evolution of a community of people inhabiting the same space.

7) What’s the problem with the term “pedestrian-scale”? (335 middle)

The problem is it only caters for able bodied individuals. This way of thinking excludes a huge percentage of our population.

8) Why do you think Solnit included a found quote from a Pottery Barn catalogue as her
epigraph? What does the epigraph tell us about the point she is trying to make in the
essay?

I think Solnit included the quote to point out how we idealise rural living when living in an urban community. The point this makes is that humans are never satisfied with their reality as things like work, commuting and errands follow us everywhere we go.

SOME KEY WORDS / CONCEPTUAL TOOLKIT from Solnit’s article
Nature vs Culture | Country vs City | Rural vs Urban | Individualism vs community (p. 334)
New urbanism (p. 334 bottom)
Democracy and democratic space (p. 335 top)

Timothy Morton, excerpt from The Ecological Thought (2010)
As you read through this excerpt by Morton, jot down a list of your own questions about it,
and, if there’s time in tutorials, raise them with your tutor.