THE LANGUAGE or LANDSCAPE Anne Whiston Spien Photographs by. Anne Whiston Spirn ‘Yale University Press ‘New Haven and London1 Dwelling and Tongue: ‘The Language of Landscape Laxpscave Is LANGUAGE ‘The language of landscape is our native language, Landscape was the original dwelling: humans evolved among plants and animals, under the sky, upon the ‘earth, near water. Everyone carries that legacy in body and mind, Humans touched, saw, heard, smelled, tasted, lived in, and shaped landscapes before the species had words to describe what it did. Landscapes were the firs human texts, read before the invention of other signs and symbols. Clouds, wind, and sun were cles to weather, ripples and eddies signs of rocks and life under water, caves and ledges promise of shelter, leaves guides to foos birdsalls warnings of predators. Eurly writing resembled landscape; other languages—verbal, mathematical, ‘graphic —derive from the language of landscape.’ ‘The Language of landscape can be spoken, written, read, and innagined. Speak ing and reading landscape are by-products of living —af moving, mating eating — sed strategies of survival —creating refuge, providing prospect, growing food. To read and write landscape isto earn and teach: to know the world, to express ideas and 10 influence others, Landscape, as language, makes thought tangible and imagination possible, Through it humans share experience with future genera- tions, just as ancestors inscribed their valucs and beliefs in the landscapes they left asa legacy."a treasure deposited bythe practice of speech." a rich lode of literature: ‘tural and cultural histories, landscapes of purpose, pactry, power, and prayer? Landscape has all the features of language. It contains the equivalent of words and parts of specch—patterns of shape, structure, material, formation, and function. All landscapes. are combinations of these. Like the meanings ‘of words, the meanings of landscape elements (ater, for example) are only [Potential wntil contest shapes them. Rules of grammar govern and guide how landscapes are formed. some specificto places and their local dialects, others uni- versal Landscape is pragmatic, poetic, hetorical, polemical. Landscapeissceneof life, cultivated construction, carrier of meaning. It is anguag Verbal language reflects landscape. Up and down, in and out—the most basic metaphors of verbal language—stem from. experience wf landscape, like bodily movement through landscape.’ Verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and their sontexts—parts of speech and the structure of verbal language—miror land- Scape processes, products, and theit modifiers, material. formal,and spatial. Just asa river combines water flowing. and croded banks, sentences combine actions and actors objects and modifiers The content of a word or sentence, like that of hill orLandscape legacy: avert of tomes Avebury. England valley, defines i. Verbal texts and landscapes are nested: word within sentence within Paragraph within chapter, leaf within branch within tree within forest. Words reflect ‘observation and experience dialects are sich in terms specific to landscape of place, like “estuary English” described so vividly by John Stilgoc.* Shakespeare, Mark ‘Twain, TS. Eliot, Anthony Hecht, and Adrienne Rich, like verbal poets of every literature, mine landscape for structure, chythm, and fresh metaphors of human experience; so do pocts of landscape itself, “Capability” Brown, Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lawrence Halprin Martha Schwartz" Landseape is the material home, the language of landscape is a habitat of ‘mind, Heidegger called language the house of being, but the language of land- scape truly is the house of being; we dwell with i, To dell —to make and care fora place —is self-expression, Heidegger traced that vertvin High Gerrman and (Old English; in both, the oot for"toctwell” means“to build."In German, the roots for building and dwelling and "I am" are the same. ! am because | dell; [evel because I build. Bawen—buitding, dwelling, and being—means “to build," “to construct," but also to “cherish and protect.to preserve and care or, specifically to Will the sol to cultivate the mind.”* Landscape associates people and place. Danish Jandskab, German laridichaf Dutch landschap, ad Old English landscipe combine two roots. “Land” means both a place and the people living there. Skabe and scfm mean “to shape: sulfixes~skaband