Pix Of The Day: We Are Children Of Our Landscape
CREDIT: © Ann Bowker/Mad About Mountains
WHERE: Cogra Moss, nr. Whitehaven, Cumbria, England. WHAT: mountain lake circuit.
MAP: Cogra Moss. Thumbnail click pops-up larger image. Smaller screen users, please click here for a resizable scrolling panorama if you become pixel challenged.

The theme of landscape as a profound influence on cultural, literary, and spiritual matters, is the subject of academic courses at all levels. A Google search will turn up many similar to this Georgia Southern University example, 'Spirit of Place in British Literature'.

The title of today's piece is a quotation from Lawrence Durrell, "We are children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it." D.H. Lawrence wrote 'Studies in Classic American Literature', which has an opening chapter named 'The Spirit of Place'. The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University has an interesting online exhibition entitled 'The Illustrating Traveler: Adventure And Illustration In North America And The Caribbean 1760-1895'. All these resources are worthy of further investigation.

However, as interesting as these learned works are, the experience of deus loci, manitou, spirit of place, or… call it what you will… can be experienced simply by being in places where the phenomenon manifests itself most readily. One such place that we have oftentimes experienced is seen in today's feature picture, Cogra Moss and Blake Fell. The able bodied should have little difficulty finding locally somewhere similar.

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