US vs. UK round six: the natural landscape

[Deebank]

I think the "set piece" landscapes in the US are undoubtedly without equal for drama, but the UK is generally pretty whereas the US is generally boring.

That is because one is ( just about ) a continent with remarkably invariant geology and the other is a country with the most variable geology on Earth for its size.

As Rayge says you can't travel much more than 20 miles in the UK without encountering dramatically different landscapes whereas you can travel for hours in the US and see no change at all

I would prefer to visit US landscapes as one offs but I would far rather live in the UK landscape, it is familiar for one thing, as a geologist I am familiar with most of it and its reasons for being as it is. But also, as Rayge also says , landscape in the UK is far more tied into history and myth and that makes it rather more interesting. Most of the US was only inhabited less than 200 years ago, what sort of relationship can people have with such a landscape?

For real mountain drama, as Deebank says, the Canadian Rockies are without equal, but I would love to visit the big desert parks of the SW US and Yosemite and Jellystone and the Grand Canyon, and the Hudson river valley etc etc etc

What difference does the length of time a country has been inhabited make to the relationship you have with the landscape?

Every difference!
It's about history, folklore, myth, legend, mystery and it's around every corner in the UK.

Read Alan Garner, or John Cowper-Powys.

If there's one thing modern archeology has demonstrated, it's that the earliest structures (up to 6,000 years old) still strewn around our countryside directly reference their surroundings and were perhaps raised in reverence to the very living landscape itself!!!


(apologies got a bit carried away there...)

[Minnie the Minx]

I'm not denying that UK landscapes have an amazing history with folklore and so forth. Your brother said 'most of the US inhabited less than 200 years' as if that means you can't have a relationship with it. What does that mean? And define 'have a relationship' with in this context please.

[copehead]

I think the "set piece" landscapes in the US are undoubtedly without equal for drama, but the UK is generally pretty whereas the US is generally boring.

That is because one is ( just about ) a continent with remarkably invariant geology and the other is a country with the most variable geology on Earth for its size.

As Rayge says you can't travel much more than 20 miles in the UK without encountering dramatically different landscapes whereas you can travel for hours in the US and see no change at all

I would prefer to visit US landscapes as one offs but I would far rather live in the UK landscape, it is familiar for one thing, as a geologist I am familiar with most of it and its reasons for being as it is. But also, as Rayge also says , landscape in the UK is far more tied into history and myth and that makes it rather more interesting. Most of the US was only inhabited less than 200 years ago, what sort of relationship can people have with such a landscape?

For real mountain drama, as Deebank says, the Canadian Rockies are without equal, but I would love to visit the big desert parks of the SW US and Yosemite and Jellystone and the Grand Canyon, and the Hudson river valley etc etc etc

What difference does the length of time a country has been inhabited make to the relationship you have with the landscape?

Accumulated myth and history obvs

[harvey k-tel]

Most of the US was only inhabited less than 200 years ago, what sort of relationship can people have with such a landscape?

Actually, "most" of the US (and North and South America) has been inhabited for thousands of years.

[Samoan]

The Canadian Rockies are awesome but for me, almost to chocolate box perfection. They're so beautiful, almost too beautiful.

So I give this to the US state of Alaska for added ruggedness, particularly for Denali National Park with Mount McKinley and for the Kenai Peninsula. To ride the Alaska Railroad is phenomenal.

[copehead]

Most of the US was only inhabited less than 200 years ago, what sort of relationship can people have with such a landscape?

Actually, "most" of the US (and North and South America) has been inhabited for thousands of years.

True

But I was talking from the point of view of the vast majority of the population.

[Minnie the Minx]

Most of the US was only inhabited less than 200 years ago, what sort of relationship can people have with such a landscape?

Actually, "most" of the US (and North and South America) has been inhabited for thousands of years.

True

But I was talking from the point of view of the vast majority of the population.

Eh?

[copehead]

Actually, "most" of the US (and North and South America) has been inhabited for thousands of years.

True

But I was talking from the point of view of the vast majority of the population.

Eh?

The vast majority of the population of the US moved there within the last 200 years as immigrants.

I didn't think I was making a difficult point here.

Unless you feel you have as much connection to the landscape myths of the Pueblo Indians ( for instance ) as a Pueblo Indian, just because you inhabit a place formerly inhabited by Pueblo Indians, I suppose.

[Deebank]

Well, indeed.

The native american tribes have all the same deep associations with their landscape as we do with ours to be fair.

And the layers of legend are already being laid down by more recent incomers (the Wild West etc). But for sheer granularity you can't beat good old Blighty!

I was born and grew up near Bryn Celli Ddu and Bryn Yr Hen Bobl and then I lived a few miles from Chanctonbury Ring (Google it if you like). Now Dartmoor beckons!...


There's a Snake Mounds of the Ohio Valley around every bend in the UK!

... nearly.

[Minnie the Minx]

What patronising bollocks. I thoroughly look forward to answering this at length when I am at the computer and not on a phone.

[copehead]

What patronising bollocks. I thoroughly look forward to answering this at length when I am at the computer and not on a phone.

I am literally trembling with anticipation

Not quite sure what is patronising about pointing out that peoples spread layer upon layer of myth and history across their landscapes over the generations and most Americans have only been there for 4-5 generations but I am sure you will make that clear

[Minnie the Minx]

What patronising bollocks. I thoroughly look forward to answering this at length when I am at the computer and not on a phone.

I am literally trembling with anticipation

Not quite sure what is patronising about pointing out that peoples spread layer upon layer of myth and history across their landscapes over the generations and most Americans have only been there for 4-5 generations but I am sure you will make that clear

You're evading my question

1. Define 'relationship' in this context - you've questioned 'what sort' of relationship you can have with a land because your race has only been there less than 200 years.

[copehead]

What patronising bollocks. I thoroughly look forward to answering this at length when I am at the computer and not on a phone.

I am literally trembling with anticipation

Not quite sure what is patronising about pointing out that peoples spread layer upon layer of myth and history across their landscapes over the generations and most Americans have only been there for 4-5 generations but I am sure you will make that clear

You're evading my question

1. Define 'relationship' in this context - you've questioned 'what sort' of relationship you can have with a land because your race has only been there less than 200 years.

I just think you can have a richer relationship with a land that you know centuries of history and myths about from on a purely intellectual level if those myths and that history is that of your own ancestors. That is my own personal feeling, it isn't a fact.

I am sure knowing the myths and history of, for instance, the Pueblo Indians makes their landscape more interesting, but I am not sure it can you give the same sense of connection and intellectual satisfaction as it would to a Pueblo Indian, again my own feeling not a fact.

Not a pop at immigrants or anything of the sort if you think I am heading down that route.

I feel very at home on chalk uplands for instance, part of that must come from knowing that generations of my ancestors lived on them and becoming imbued with the myths and legends associated with them.

Don't other people feel that?

I know generations of my family lived in the Chilterns but I think I felt that affinity with downland before I knew that.

On the other hand I feel no affinity at all with the Black country and generations of my family came from there as well and I feel an affinity with the Celtic legends of North Wales despite having had no family coming from their recently, but then the UK is a small country

It is about feeling comfortable, I feel comfortable in teh scenery, landscape and history of England and Wales in a way the I don't think I ever could in the US, although I would enjoy the spectacle of their landscape without a doubt, I have done, at its best it is far more dramatic and mind blowing than anything we have to offer.


But sometimes you don't want you mind to be blown you want to look across the postman Pat landscape of Troutbeck, or look out to the North from the top of a chalk down with burial mounds scattered around you.

[Minnie the Minx]

I appreciate the explanation and think I understand the sentiment at the heart of what you say here, for example, I feel differently in Yorkshire and say the Scottish Islands than I do in London. I feel a sentimental connection to an upbringing in Yorkshire but none of my relatives are from there originally. I feel a sense of 'wonder' in those places that I don't in the south of England, and it is nothing tangible or that I can fully describe, it just 'is'.

But, I understand that I have a relationship with the land that is primarily about familiarity and comfort of my own lived experience, not that of 'those that went before me' and I don't look up hill or down dale and feel a connection with ancestry that by the nature of it's timespan and longevity somehow overrides being in Yosemite, for example. In places like that, and among the redwoods and driving along Big Sur I have always felt a pull like an undercurrent tugging at my ankles. I felt pretty similar in the Blue Mountains of Oz, but as we're talking about the US I'll try not to go off at a tangent.

If I think about my relationship with the land, it has nothing to do with the humans around me and how long they have been there - that's immaterial. How I feel when I'm in hills and mountains and by lakes and rivers relates directly to how the earth is talking to me, not who was living there 500 years ago. I'm in awe of the land, not the tenants. This is probably why we view things differently.

[The Prof]

Unless you feel you have as much connection to the landscape myths of the Pueblo Indians ( for instance ) as a Pueblo Indian, just because you inhabit a place formerly inhabited by Pueblo Indians, I suppose.

What patronising bollocks. I thoroughly look forward to answering this at length when I am at the computer and not on a phone.

Look in the mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror

[Minnie the Minx]

Unless you feel you have as much connection to the landscape myths of the Pueblo Indians ( for instance ) as a Pueblo Indian, just because you inhabit a place formerly inhabited by Pueblo Indians, I suppose.

What patronising bollocks. I thoroughly look forward to answering this at length when I am at the computer and not on a phone.

Look in the mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror

[The Prof]

You mean

[Minnie the Minx]

You mean

Did I tell you I cried when we went with witchypoo and corporate whore as well??
What a knobhead

[The Prof]

Did I tell you I cried when we went with witchypoo and corporate whore as well??

Yeh - I read it on the internet.

[Six String]

I think the "set piece" landscapes in the US are undoubtedly without equal for drama, but the UK is generally pretty whereas the US is generally boring.

That is because one is ( just about ) a continent with remarkably invariant geology and the other is a country with the most variable geology on Earth for its size.

As Rayge says you can't travel much more than 20 miles in the UK without encountering dramatically different landscapes whereas you can travel for hours in the US and see no change at all

I would prefer to visit US landscapes as one offs but I would far rather live in the UK landscape, it is familiar for one thing, as a geologist I am familiar with most of it and its reasons for being as it is. But also, as Rayge also says , landscape in the UK is far more tied into history and myth and that makes it rather more interesting. Most of the US was only inhabited less than 200 years ago, what sort of relationship can people have with such a landscape?

For real mountain drama, as Deebank says, the Canadian Rockies are without equal, but I would love to visit the big desert parks of the SW US and Yosemite and Jellystone and the Grand Canyon, and the Hudson river valley etc etc etc

What difference does the length of time a country has been inhabited make to the relationship you have with the landscape?

Accumulated myth and history obvs

The native Americans had plenty of history and myth with the U.S. before it became this country we know now.