Language of Landscapes

"There are landscapes within landscapes within landscapes. Every landscape feature is both a whole and part of one or more larger wholes: leaf and twig, twig and tree, tree and forest; garden and house, house and street, street and town, town and region. Every phenomenon, thing, event, and feeling has a context. A valley is not a valley if it has no ridge or plateau, no up and down. Motion is imperceptible without rest, sound without stillness. Without sense of past and future, there can be no present, without threat no refuge. The same material, form, or action may have different meanings in different settings—water in a desert, water in a sea.

"Landscapes are the world itself and may also be metaphors of the world. A tree can be both a tree and The Tree, a path both a path and The Path. A tree in the Garden of Eden represents the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge. It becomes the archetype of Tree."

"Elements of landscape language are like parts of speech, each with separate functions and associations. Flowing, like a verb, is a pattern of events expressed in both water and path. Water and path, like nouns, are action’s agents and objects; like adjectives or adverbs, their qualities of wetness or breadth extend meaning. Elements do not exist in isolation, but rather combine in significant ways, like words in a phrase, clause, or sentence, to make a tree, fountain, street, or a larger, more complex landscape story—garden, town, or forest. Every landscape feature, such as a mountain, embodies at least one complete expression—its own formation. Describing the elements is like looking at landscape—scanning the scene, then successively zooming in and out on significant details, letting the context blur but keeping it always in view."

- Anne Whiston Spirn
The Language of Landscape