My father was a soil scientist with the Geological Survey.
Land is not merely soil.
Landscape is more than flat land covered by floodwater, the seeping of peat bogs, a river of liquid pewter viewed from a sentry tower. It's an influence on what a person values, what she is willing to sacrifice or argue for.
The divide between a 'wild' plant and what is suitable for the garden is unnatural and meaningless. Gardens begin and end in the mind, and the Western way of thinking is not good at accommodating that.
My pre-occupation is with the relationship between objects, whether I am dealing with woods, fields or water, rocks or trees, shrubs and plants, or groups of plants.
Once you digitize data, you can actually analyze patterns and relationships in geographic space - relationships between certain health patterns and air or water pollution, between plants and climate, soils, landscape.
I grew up in the West, grew up on the land, was educated as a geologist.
The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me seem like a form of madness. I'm also interested in the way landscape shapes individuals and populations, and from that, cultures.
I have long been interested in landscape history, and when younger and more robust I used to do much tramping of the English landscape in search of ancient field systems, drove roads, indications of prehistoric settlement.
