Grids and the Sublime

I found this week's reading, that focused on the grid system, to be very interesting. The idea of having that organized structure was one that I had neglected to pick up when looking at how the city I am from is laid out. In Alex S. Maclean's "The American Grid," the overlooking of the grid system is mentioned, "there are moments when on wrongly thinks that the natural features have penetrated it [the town's layout] instead of the other way around." This is exactly how I thought, until I read the information about the grid system. That naturally we had an organized city with straight line streets-- yes I'm aware of how ignorant my not noticing the artificial structure sounds. We are manipulating an area to be structured the way we want and in time it appears to be naturally structured that way.

In David E. Nye's, "The American Sublime," he defines a sublime object as, "something one is not accustomed to, something extraordinary." I fully agree with this, as a world-wide definition, because when I travelled to Peru and hiked Machu Picchu, I was in awe. I was truly captivated by such an amazing site. He also talks about how places like "Niagara Falls, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon," are looked at much more as tourist sites, and the sites sublime nature isn't as it was (before it was known as a tourist attraction). This is the same as in Peru. People spending their time photographing the are, instead of truly taking in its amazingness. They are occupied by pictures that will last but aren't in the moment, remembering the site they saw through the naked eye. This causes the site to lose it's sublime nature.