1. In the European tradition, landscapes -- a painters' idea -- began as visions of beauty, of serenity. They were pastoral, idealizing the life of country people. Then they came to include scenes from nature, great waterfalls and mountain ranges; and then renderings of skyscraper canyons and other urban scenes -- still on a grand scale; and then -- with the help of photographers -- images of garbage cans in alleys; and then of various kinds of debris, living and inanimate, scattered through scenes of degradation and desolation. Which has changed more, the landscape or how we look at it?

2. Is a degraded landscape more sophisticated than a pristine one? More realistic? Less romantic?

3. Why is gardening the most widely practiced hobby in the United States? When you can't resist planting a few peas in the backyard on the first warm day of spring, what is it that you crave? Peas?

4. The word wilderness acquired positive connotations only quite recently. Before the mid-19th century, in the European-American tradition, wilderness -- especially those features of wilderness that we now think particularly lovely: seacoasts, islands, mountains, forests -- was regarded as frightful, ugly, even evil. The idea of wilderness as a good thing took root and prospered as our culture became more urban and industrial. What unfulfilled need in contemporary life does wilderness satisfy? Do you think a good society needs access to wilderness? Why?

5. Wilderness has been associated in many cultures with spiritual revelation. Is it what is absent from wilderness that prompts revelation, or what is present there?

6. Is it possible to love well, say, Yellowstone National Park without also caring about Cody, Wyoming, and the Idaho ranches just beyond the park's western boundary?

7. Does it matter where one was born or lives? Is landscape merely the incidental background of your life, or has it in some way defined or shaped your experience?

8. Supposing that people and landscapes are absolutely distinguishable, where does one end and the other begin? Do I begin and end at the outermost cells of my skin? Am I in any respect constructed out of those things that I have seen and heard, smelled and touched, tasted? Suppose that I could remember none of these things? Would I still be the same person?

9. Can a healthy community be sustained in a sick landscape?

10. Can a place be a consolation?

11. We really can't go home again? If we can't, does this mean that we need not remember home, that the memory of it has nothing to teach us? Which has changed more, the landscape of your past or how you look at it?

Reprinted from The Hungry Mind Review, Winter 1994.