WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

The essay (or "walking meditation") "Landscaping" describes the author's view of the place for man within "nature," or the natural, pre-existing environment. The author uses a college campus as an analogy for, as well as a concrete example of, the difficulties we experience when trying to "blend in" with nature. The structure and style of the piece help to elucidate and support the theme that, if humanity refuses to pay attention to nature, it will suffer negative consequences.

The most notable structural feature of "Landscaping" is the fact that it is a "walking meditation." A walking meditation allows the writer to express a philosophical theme through use of an ordinary journey, in this case a walk across a college campus. This walk allows the writer, and therefore the reader, to experience the central issue from many different angles. These different viewpoints both support the central theme and elaborate upon it, providing specific criticisms of man's interaction with nature and also making more general observations. Among these general points are a series of rhetorical questions that ask for a solution to the problem of man's correct place in nature. These questions are not answered because the writer feels that they in fact cannot be answered. The issue, to him, is so complicated that it cannot be definitively solved in general; it is only when man thinks deeply about how nature impacts his specific project that he can find a solution. The structure of "Landscaping" guides the reader to both the author's philosophical and physical destinations, in addition to providing a foundation for the piece's stylistic nuances.

The style of "Landscaping" is closely related to its tone: the author is unhappy with what he sees and becomes even sarcastic at times. Of the many stylistic techniques within the piece, metaphors are perhaps the most prominent. The author employs metaphors such as "prison-island," "glass cubes," and "gates of Hell" both for their vivid images and for their sarcasm, since they are all exaggerations. Sarcasm is used not only in metaphors: for example, at one point the word "natural" is used ironically, to point out that the negative things we accept as natural may be, according to the author, preventable wastes of energy. In fact, there are many points in the piece where words that normally have positive connotations are assigned negative ones. In particular, the word "convenience," which many people associate with progress and modernity, is used to indicate laziness and acceptance of waste. In addition, the author associates a concrete sidewalk with a wasteland and a "weedwhacker" with an evil executioner. These inversions of meaning reflect the author's theme that what we see as the beauty of nature and modern architecture is, at least in some cases, actually ugliness. This point is supported by very powerful imagery, including the sarcastic metaphors mentioned above. The power and tone of this imagery show the author's strong negative feelings toward the attempts to recreate nature's beauty artificially.

The essay "Landscaping" exhibits the very strong reaction of its author to humanity's failed interactions with nature. The author asserts that, although our proper place in nature is probably impossible to determine, before we interact with our environment we should study and learn from it. Failure to do this, he says, will result in waste and ugliness. This theme is not only found in the writer's philosophical musings&emdash;it is also found in the structure and style of the writing, and this is what lends the piece its potency.