A reasoned whole picture transforms scattered facts into landscape meaning
Evidence
Some years ago, in scrambling up a steep hillside of the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, I found the ground well strewn with petrified marine shells of several species. I was at an elevation of not less than 7,000 feet. The discovery did not surprise me in the least; but it did make me wonder what the prehistoric Americans who must have seen such shells had thought about them. I knew that I was standing somewhere near the shoreline of a shallow sea that occupied this spot at a time before the land had been slowly upraised. How did I know this? The story had been interpreted for me; seemingly unrelated facts had been reasoned into a whole picture that solved all difficulties. — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 123
Categorization
- XREF: Model example for the Reading the Landscape course: reading present landscape structure (shells at 7,000 ft) as evidence of past disturbance. — connects to: A single whole picture can explain a desert’s ecology to outsiders — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 312; Landscape reading answers some histories while opening further questions — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 28; Aerial landscape reading reveals clear-cut forests as fragmented mosaic scraps expressing social indecision. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 563 (+3 more)
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- Interpretation reveals meanings rather than simply communicating facts
#corroborates(0.82) — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 69 - Aerial landscape reading reveals clear-cut forests as fragmented mosaic scraps expressing social indecision.
#exemplifies(0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 563 - Everyday walking replaces totalizing spatial order with fragmentary, allusive pedestrian rhetoric.
#contradicts(0.76) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1336