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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/sanctity-american-landscapes/"></div><p>The vocabulary of wilderness is often self-explanatory, sometimes onomatopoetic. Alpenglow requires no elaboration; you’ll know it when you see it. Walk through brush and you’ll brush up against it — it’ll sound like brush. Scree echoes its own murmurous hiss, sliding down a slope beyond its angle of repose — that critical “point at which gravity challenges friction,” Antonya Nelson defines it, “the tense moment before one succumbs to the other.” We’ve got sheepback rock, mudslides, and hedgerows. In <em>Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape</em>, a dictionary-cum-field guide, dozens of writers contribute brief entries detailing the lexical pleasures native to their regional geographies. And don’t forget the fauna, either; the chickadees sing their own name. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/sanctity-american-landscapes/#more-5512" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
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The Sanctity of American Landscapes

James Freitas is a freelance writer from Massachusetts. He is a graduate student in NYU's Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program.