The Grid and Sublimity

In this week’s readings, I was particularly struck by the juxtaposition of (recalling Meinig’s The Beholding Eye) “landscape as artifact” against “landscape as nature”. I view the “serious attempt to impose the rational grid upon a sometimes unruly nature” (Grim’s Maps of the Township and Range System) as a very blatant physical manifestation of landscape as artifact – it almost perfectly echoes Meinig’s description of “a rigid linear geometry [that] has been set discordantly but relentlessly upon the varied curves of nature.” As I read, I hypothesized that there must be a reason for American’s desire to control nature, and I believe this reason arises from a “landscape as nature” type of view, which The American Sublime explores profusely. In Nye’s writing, the incredible geographic features discovered in America are said to move people to speechlessness, immobility, and powerful emotions the viewer cannot quite understand; descriptions such as “terrifying, painful, almost intolerable, and yet at the same time delightful…[inducing] both terror and rapture” are common.  Americans wanted to be able to express some control over what was frightening, overwhelming, and largely unknown, and ultimately succeeded (to an extent; natural disasters can still overcome mankind’s works). Nye writes that there “were many sublime objects defaced and conquered," and while he's referring to graffiti in context, I think it's fair to extend such adjectives to the commercialization of natural sublimity and acts such as leveling hills and re-routing rivers for mankind's convenience. I believe the grid, while convenient for taxing and policing, was ultimately an attempt by mankind to organize and conquer a larger, scarier entity than itself, and that it served as a psychological assurance of sorts.