The Last Great Walk: The True Story of a 1909 Walk from New York to San Francisco, and Why it Matters Today by Wayne Curtis

Author:Wayne Curtis
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2014-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Some have postulated that the ideal landscape for humans is a mixture of terrain combining savanna and forest. This has been characterized as the “prospect” and “refuge” landscape. The thought is that we’re consistently drawn to environments that have a combination of both distant views (to spot prey and potential predators) and shelter or protection (to hide swiftly in the event that we find ourselves suddenly vulnerable).

The theory suggests that humans are drawn to this sort of mixed environment—more than, say, to the middle of a dense jungle or the Great Plains—because we all share the same basic genome, the essentials of which were established when our ancestors were still living in central Africa and fine-tuning the mechanics of walking upright.

Evidence of this is spotty but intriguing. Cross-cultural studies suggest there’s a widespread human preference for a certain kind of tree: one with a dense canopy and a trunk that bifurcates close to the ground. In other words, a tree that’s easy to ascend and take cover in.

Two artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, discovered a similar aesthetic proclivity in the early 1990s when they commissioned survey takers to find what qualities people in ten countries preferred in their paintings. Then, like police sketch artists, they painted those preferences. Most landscapes looked like European calendar art. This project was meant as a sly commentary on market-driven creativity, but inadvertently demonstrated what appears to be an innate attraction to vistas of meadows and trees.

Is that preference truly embedded in our genes? Some, including the art critic Arthur Danto, doubt it. Danto suggested that these general preferences may more accurately be a demonstration of the pop-art industry’s influence over global tastes. The art on calendars doesn’t reflect an innate preference for the savanna, that is, but rather creates the longing.

We don’t gravitate to this sort of landscape only in art and calendars, it turns out, but also in the real world. The savanna-and-tree landscape hit its apogee in popularity in the eighteenth century under famed British gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1716–1783), who was renowned for designing grassy, open fields studded with randomly placed clumps of wide-crowned trees. He designed some 170 parks in Great Britain and is essentially the patron saint of the suburban backyard. Credit (or blame) him for the ubiquity of lawns edged with small stands of Japanese maples or crape myrtles, a sort of bonsai version of the African savanna.

So that may be the static landscape we prefer to gaze upon. But what about when we’re in motion? Is there an archetypal walkway that we’re hardwired to be drawn toward when in motion?

If a preference does exist, it may be the linear equivalent of the savanna, or what’s been called a “keyhole pathway.” These are straight or slightly curving routes overarched thickly with tree limbs and creating a tunnel effect, offering protection from light rain (and harsh sun) along with a distant view (if slightly obstructed). It’s also permeable along the sides, allowing those on foot to quickly duck and cover if a threat arises.

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