Sunday, July 23, 2017

THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE by VONN McKEE


Rugged mountain peaks cloaked in snow. A parched desert streaked in reds and yellows. The billowing swells of a tallgrass prairie. The landscape of the West is “scene one” in nearly every western movie you’ve ever watched, or described on the first few pages of every western novel you’ve ever read. It acts as an unnamed but vital character and provides a beautiful–or punishing–backdrop to the story being told.

Director John Ford frequently featured Monument Valley's stark scenery, beginning with Stagecoach (1939) to Cheyenne Autumn (1965).


Writers look to landforms to evoke deep emotions, as did William A. Quayle:

“Loneliness, thy other name, thy one true synonym, is prairie.” The Prairie and the Sea (1905)

To explorer and conservationist John Muir, it was more of a religious experience:
“Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.” The Wild Muir: Twenty-two of John Muir’s Greatest Adventures (2013)

Elmer Kelton recognized the magical connection between people and the ground they lived and died on. He wrote in The Day the Cowboys Quit, “Some people would never understand the hold this land could take on a man if he stayed rooted long enough in one spot to develop a communion with the grass-blanketed earth, to begin to feel and fall in with the rhythms of the changing seasons. There was a pulse in this land, like the pulse in a man, though most people never paused long enough to sense it.”

Annie Proulx also suggests that the power of landscape goes beyond the physical. Here is her definition from the essay, “Dangerous Ground.”

“Landscape is geography, archaeology, astrophysics, agronomy, agriculture, the violent character of the atmosphere, climate, black squirrels and wild oats, folded rock, bulldozers; it is jet trails and barbwire, government land, dry stream beds; it is politics, desert wildfire, introduced species, abandoned vehicles, roads, ghost towns, nuclear test grounds, swamps, a bakery shop, mine tailings, bridges, dead dogs.  Landscape is rural, urban, suburban, semirural, small town, village; it is outposts and bedroom communities; it is a remote ranch.”


No other writing genre is as tied to the land as is western literature. What an incredible and inspiring resource! 

All the best,

Vonn
 

“The land belongs to the future … that’s the way it seems to me. How many names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.”
- Willa Cather

14 comments:

  1. And with the land comes the weather. It forms and shapes and sculptures the land and grows all the vegetation that makes the land a living thing. One reviewer of the "The Hardest Ride" complained that I talked too much about the weather. It was very much a part of the story, as much as any one character. There were times that the weather almost made the pursuers quit and was an enemy to both sides even though its changes might favor one side or the other at the moment. It would chnage. They were not the weather's enemy, the weather would do as it wished. How it effected those humans intruding into the wilderness was of no matter to the weather.

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    1. An excellent point. Weather plays the uncredited starring role in many a book or movie. THE REVENANT comes to mind as well. Thanks for the input!

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  2. Descriptions of landscape in my writing is something that I am weak on. Studying maps is helpful, but nothing beats a personal visit to the location of a story.
    Thank you for the post. Most interesting

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    1. I agree, Jerry. Just one more excuse to tour the western countryside! (NOTE: Sometimes I pull up a location on Google Maps and use Street View to get a better perception of the topography.)

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  3. When one lives with their surroundings, in their mind or in reality, it changes them. When writing of that experience, the words then become the readers reality. Oh the gift, as you so wonderfully illustrated, the writer gives the reader.

    Now to take a hike and get more inspiration. *Smile* Doris

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  4. There's nothing like taking in the scenery firsthand! I love hiking too. It reminds me to include tiny landscape details like spiderwebs and mossy logs. Thanks for your comment.

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  5. Thank you so much for your inspiring selections, and I'm glad Gordo added the weather. I will reread your post one more time, ending with [the so appropriate] Willa Cather.
    Jesse J Elliot

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    1. It seems to me that western writers in particular have a deep love for the land. I could be biased...

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  6. Excellent blog! Any reader of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour knows that the landscape is one of the main characters!

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    1. Thanks, boss! Those guys (especially Zane) could go on and on about mesas and sunsets, and I loved every word of it.

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  7. Spot on! There's so much variety in western landscapes--from the mountain ranges to the prairies to deserts and buttes. As much detail as any urban landscape --maybe more. Great post!

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    1. Thank you, Rich. Sometimes when I'm traveling through the West, I write down all the colors and descriptions that come to mind to use for later. Maybe someday I'll hang my hat out there for good!

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  8. Vonn, what a great post. I admit, I don't dwell a lot on my description of the land other than what the reader needs to know to "get it" about where everyone is. I need to work on that. But here is one of my favorite passages from Conagher by Louis L'Amour, who was a master at description of the land. This is really more like poetry, to me:

    At one point, visitors come from back East. One of them says to Evie (who had hated moving west) something to the effect of "I don't know how you can stand it here."

    This is Evie's response to her:
    "I love it here," she said suddenly. "I think there is something here, something more than all you see and feel…it's in the wind.

    "Oh, it is very hard!" she went on. "I miss women to talk to, I miss the things we had back East–the band concerts, the dances. The only time when we see anyone is like now, when the stage comes. But you do not know what music is until you have heard the wind in the cedars, or the far-off wind in the pines. Someday I am going to get on a horse and ride out there"–she pointed toward the wide grass before them–"until I can see the other side…if there is another side."

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    1. Thank you, Cheryl! That is a lovely passage and I know just how she feels. My husband is not fond of the desert but loves the mountains. I was very young when my family lived in Arizona. I tell people I feel like I left something behind in Arizona when we moved. Maybe my heart!

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