An American Understanding of Nature

Both of this week's readings are clear examples of reflecting on the ways in which the American landscape was processed and comprehended by its new inhabitants. In Robert Karrow's "Topographic Surveys of the United States," he chronicles the systematic topographic mapping project of the US and details the new methods of survey and dividing up the land for tax, ownership, and planning purposes. In contrast to this, David Nye's piece on "The American Sublime" reviews the history of the emotional and at times religious relationship new Americans began to have with the land. While these seem to be competing views of the terrain, the fact that Thomas Jefferson clearly advocated and adopted each perspective highlights an interesting relationship between considering townships and natural wonders as uniquely American and constitutive of American democratic virtue. Both are representative of a greater attitude within the US of a need to literally control and mentally comprehend the expanse of North America. For me, the obvious baffling and uncontrollable nature of wonders like Niagara Falls or the natural bridge in Virginia are indicative of a landscape unyielding to control, and yet through the avenues of tourism and commercializing land, even the uncontrollable has been conquered. The “nationalistic language of exceptionalism” (Nye 22) introduced in this period with regard to nature, renders the history of this accomplishment as characteristically American. Whether parceling out townships or attempting to define and market wonders of the natural terrain, it is clear that since the beginnings of westward expansion, Americans needed to compartmentalize, commodify, or at least explain everything they encountered.