Natural Aesthetics Wrap-up

 

In my last post I said that all this talk of whether it is better to appreciate nature through the steady empirical eyes of science or the soaring imaginitive eyes of the soul had put me in mind of some books I have read by Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir.

I must admit that Emerson is often beyond me. His writing is verbose, lofty, full of imagery and references to classical works, and thoroughly nineteenth century. He can write page after page on the subject of circles. He can write an essay with the title “The Over-Soul” and get away with it. Working in his fields, I have trouble harvesting the whole and am reduced to gleaning among the stalks for nuggets that I can take home.

Emerson is my poster boy for the ethereal imaginative unbounded other worldly end of the spectrum in nature appreciation. His writings represent a great store of thought that is worth every bit of the effort needed to grasp their meanings. His life and works inspired and influenced many great writers – Thoreau, Muir, Hawthorne, Whitman, Frost – the list goes on and on.

However, encounters with nature for Emerson were less about the actual things that he saw or touched or heard and more about using nature as a mirror to reflect upon the soul of man and enlighten him to spiritual principles. If we had only his writings as a guide to aesthetically appreciating nature, we would love the beauty of place and we would harmonize with nature on a spiritual level, but we would know little about nature as itself, as nature. We would look at nature and only see ourselves.

Thoreau was a neighbor and friend of Emerson and greatly influenced by him, but he tempered his transcendental flights with some practicality and earth bound insights. John Elder in his introduction to “Nature Walking”, pictures Emerson motionless gazing “through nature’s surface to its spiritual substratum” while he pictures Thoreau as “A walker rather than a gazer, an ironic, punning undercutter of his own lofty assertions, a serious field naturalist, and a pioneering environmentalist, Thoreau complements Emerson and introduces enduring elements into American nature writing.”

Now we are getting somewhere. I can get a handle on this. There are still the ethereal raptures and transcendant insights, but now too there is action near at hand rather than in the mind only. Nature, real and solid, is under our feet, in our ears as well as our eyes. Thoreau reflects on nature, but also reaches out and touches it.

I think Muir takes this blend of imagination and action to a higher level (practically as well as figuratively). No sunset walks through farmer’s fields for Muir. No quiet contemplations on the common in Concord. The wild mountains were his home. “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”

Muir could wax lyrical about the “glories” of nature, but running through all his writings is the thread of natural science and practical observation. Muir wandered in the mountains and reveled in the pure experience of nature, but he also undertook serious scientific studies that still carry weight today. Edwin Teale writes that “Even his records of scientific studies read like adventure stories.” and John Burroughs said that when Muir told the story of the preacher’s dog, Stickeen, you got “the whole theory of glaciation thrown in.”

So in the end my personal take aways from all of this would be:

1. that failure to appreciate the free gift of nature is a mistake. As Emerson says in Nature, “the simple perception of natural forms is a delight…To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone”.

2. that there is room in our dealings with nature for both imagination and science. Indeed these two should go hand in hand.

The beauty of nature, the colors, the forms, the sounds, the textures, the scents can set our minds soaring with insights into ourselves and the world of which we are a part, but science and knowledge keep us from losing our way among the clouds and chasing after mirages.

At the same time science can reveal to us portions of nature that we might overlook, hidden worlds that come to light only through careful examination but it is imagination that animates the facts and figures and brings home to us the beauty and worth of these new insights.

In this way not only can we enjoy a beautiful sunset over a pristine lake, but also the more subtle beauty of a fallen tree providing home and sustenance to a myriad of insects, plants, and animals.

MDW

Nature, Aesthetics, Science, and Experience

 

I sit by the stream munching on some chips, downing a soda, and scribbling in my journal. What I am really doing is waiting. I’m waiting on the sky to open up.

Early this morning the rising sun somehow found a way through or around or under the great billowing clouds of white and grey scattering toward the east – the last remnants of a stormy night. The rain provided a little shot in the arm to a stream depleted by summer heat. At the intersection of the bright sun beams and the clear water currents, I took some photographs.

Now the clouds have decided to close ranks; dousing the light and stealing away the shadows. It is cold and a bit dreary. I can see some patches of blue sky here and there trying to push the clouds apart. A sunny patch develops downstream so I gulp the last of my drink, stuff my gear back into my pack, and head out. It’s gone when I get there. It is now up on the ridge a hundred feet above me, but I can’t get there from here so I move on down the gully.

All morning long I chased the sun. Always it stayed tantalizingly frustratingly one step away. In the afternoon I crawled down the side of a long waterfall. The rocks were wet and slippery. My boots got filled with water. I was cold and wet and tired, but at the bottom I perked up because I had finally caught the sun.

The gully makes a wide slow turn to the left here and it opens wide to the sky. Sheer walls of grey rock rise tall and straight on both sides. The only trees are sparse stunted ones up at the very top that lean precariously out over the edge and peer down at me. The water, churning and frothing just seconds before, now spreads out into a thin smooth sheet of glass sliding quietly across the wide flat floor.

Everywhere is sunlight. It streams down from the open sky. It reflects off the surface of the water. I bounces back and forth between the walls. The heat seems intense after so long in the cold damp shadows, but I’m glad of it. I lean back against the wall and spread myself out to drink in all the energy that I can. I close my eyes and revel in the warm touch on my face. If I squeeze my eyes tight shut and tilt my head directly toward the sun, I can see the red glow of life illuminated by the intense light as it seeps through my lids.

It is quiet here. The waterfall is tucked around the corner. With my eyes still closed I listen. There is a soft irregular pitter-patter sound. Tiny fragments of stone pried loose by wind or water or sunlight sprinkle down. The chips litter the floor forming a crunchy edge around the water. Eventually some deluge will sweep them away and others will take their place. How many years? The slow carving of the gully goes on and on whether we stop to recognize it or not.

I stayed in that place a long time. Several times I tried to leave, but each time I would stop to photograph something and afterward I would go back to my spot on the wall for a while. Finally I decided I had better get a move on. I sloshed through the water toward the exit.

The walls narrowed, pushing the water back together. They urged it on faster and faster and then unceremoniously kicked it down the stairs of another waterfall. The sheet of glass was shattered into innumerable sparkling shards.

I paused at the edge. Behind me was light and warmth and quiet solitude beneath an open sky of blue and white. In front was a plunge down into a close, shadowy, noisy, splashing world under a thick green canopy. I filled my lungs with one final breath of warm air and followed the water down and down over the rocks – although with a little less wild abandon so as to avoid being shattered myself.

So what has this story got to do with aesthetics? Well, although this story ain’t Shakespeare, I hope that it illustrates in a practical way some of the objections that folks have brought against Calrson’s view that science must be our framework for appreciating nature “correctly”.

There is so much more to our experience of nature than can be explained by science. Something ineffable in nature stirs our souls. As Emerson says in Nature; “…the simple perception of natural forms is a delight.” A post by fencer discusses the “spirit of place” in appreciating nature.

As I have mentioned before, I have a background in environmental science and I have spent a lot of time in the woods. Maybe I know a little more about the workings of nature than the average Joe, but most of the time when I am walking around the woods, I’m using the artsy-fartsy side of my brain and not the analytical side. The simple joy of felling the sun on my face trumps weighty thoughts of geologic history or solar radiation calculations.

Thinking about the relative importance of scientific understanding versus the warm fuzzies has put me in mind of several other books that I have on my shelf - works by Muir, Emerson, and Thoreau. Perhaps I had better touch on those next time.

MDW

Natural Aesthetics – Part Three

 

Last time we were talking about Allen Carlson’s ideas on how to appreciate nature as nature rather than as isolated objects or as mere scenery. Carlson puts forth an idea that he calls the natural environment model.

The premise is that nature does not have clear boundaries like art works. Nature is “frameless”. Sitting in a forest is different than viewing a painting of a forest. The real forest surrounds us – there is no picture frame or concert hall stage to tell us what is to be included for consideration and what is not. Sights, sounds, odors, physical sensations, animals; all are free to come and go as they please and we need to decide either to include them in our aesthetic experience (a deer walking past) or exclude them (the noise of a low flying airplane).

Carlson includes an excerpt from a work by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (Topophilia) which runs through a laundry list of sensations included in a typical natural scene. He then concludes:

Tuan’s account of how to appreciate the natural environment fits well with our earlier answer to the question of what to appreciate: that is, everything. This answer, of course, will not do. We cannot appreciate everything; there must be limits and emphases in our aesthetic appreciation of nature as there are in our appreciation of art. Without such limits and emphases our experience of the natural environment would be only “a meld of physical sensations” without any meaning or significance.

Carlson’s plan to bring order to the chaos is to use the framework of natural science so that knowledge can transform the raw experience and bring harmony, determinance, and meaning.  Thus:

In the way in which the art critic and the art historian are well equipped to aesthetically appreciate art, the naturalist and and the ecologist are well equipped to aesthetically appreciate nature.

If we are informed about nature through natural history and ecology, then we will be inclined to appreciate nature and especially we will be able to appreciate nature for what it is rather than imposing human centered constructs on to it.

Looking at a rock in the stream as part of its natural environment rather than as an isolated abstract object, appreciates it correctly. Our knowledge of the type of rock and its location allow us to comprehend how it was formed and how it has been shaped by the actions of the water and how its chemical composition might in turn influence the water.

Our knowledge of ecology will enable us to view expansive natural scenes without the need to impose the framework of idealized landscape paintings onto them. We can appreciate any view based on its ecological makeup and interactions even if on the surface it doesn’t conform to classical visual forms.

This idea seems like a good start. It points us in the direction of appreciating nature as nature and gives us some quantifiable guidelines that can be applied across all the many different kinds of environments. I have a background in science and environmental studies so there is plenty for me to like in this model.

However, I’m not completely sold on Carlson’s statement that “we cannot appreciate everything”. I’ll have to think about that some more. Also many of the following essays fault this model for relying too much on cold calculating science without leaving room for personal experience, imagination, intuition, and folklore.

Next time we’ll see if we can wrap this up.

MDW