Beauty

I have never seen a landscape made entirely by nature that was not sublimely, perfectly beautiful. Whether welcoming or forbidding, wet or dry, forest or plain, mountain or valley or ocean or sky, seen from ground level or high in the air or under the water. 

And the same applies to the patterns made by “primitive” people as well as pure “nature”--in fact the two are inseparable. The little settlements and clearings of tribal peoples look as organic and fit as seamlessly into the landscape as any meadow or outcrop or copse of trees would. 

When I look out my window at the low wooded ridge overlooking our valley, all I see is perfect harmony, all the different elements fitted together in precisely the right way to create a flawless picture, like the notes of a Mozart piano concerto. Even the way the oaks and maple grade into redwoods and bays is executed with a consummate subtlety no human artist could match. But, in order to see the whole picture, my eye now has to filter out a whole series of jarring, discordant man-made notes that go stuttering across the frame--a tall grove of Eucalyptus, various roofs and telephone poles, an incongruous palm tree, a big metal water tank, a livid purple liquidambar, a silver gray Eucalyptus, all 100 many upward, competing for eye space and cutting off all but third or so of that perfect hill. A hodgepodge of unrelated blobs and spikes and flat lines. 

Things we put together in our environment can sometimes beautify it if done right, or at least screen worse excrescences from view, but by and large our man-made attempts at landscape are such as to jangle rather than soothe. 

Not that most of us even pay attention… 

Those of you who live in the great southern California coastal plain are blessed, if that word is not too great a stretch, with having at least a visible natural horizon on the inland side--those great upsweeping ramparts of the Peninsular Range. At least they are visible on some clear days. 

But, how many of you can imagine what it was to see the other great spectacle of your region--the coastal plain itself. In fact, few valley dwellers anywhere in California know what it is to actually see across your own valley, now that the horizon ends at the McDonald’s across the street. 

It must have been fairly awe-inspiring. A great hummocky level sweep of grassy, flowered plain, with mountains for a backdrop, a prospect broken only by random clumps and lines of oak or cottonwood or sycamore trees by meandering streams, and maybe a herd of elk or pronghorns a mile or two off, for perspective. 

The valleys were the first and hardest hit, so that what we are left with now is either mile upon mile of cluttered slurbia or else mile upon deadly boring mile of flat agricultural fields, as full of life as a pool table. The rest has gone to weeds. What hasn’t yet suffered any of these calamities is scarce and priceless (although most of us haven’t realized it yet). 

We have a funny habit of calling undeveloped, pristine land “unspoiled,” and make a real selling point of it. 

So, why then don’t we call “developed” land “spoiled”? Instead we call it “developed,” or “improved”! and make a selling point of that! 

Obviously we must be lying out one or other. You can’t have it both ways. If we really consider “developed land” to be spoiled, why not call it that and be honest? No wonder the Indians all thought we were nuts, or liars. “White man speak with forked tongue.”