Tonsor: Intellectual History: The Romantic Garden II

I.

After Tonsor finished his lecture on Romantic gardens and landscapes, he packed his satchel with the notes and books he had brought to class. I remained in my seat -- motionless, ruminating, processing all that I had just heard. It felt as though my mind had been stung by the proverbial torpedo fish, likened to Socrates because he paralyzed his interlocutors with probing questions and dazzling intellect.[1]

As my professor left the lectern and approached and asked, knowing he was being ironic, "Did the lecture convey anything of interest to you, Mr. Whitney?"

"It certainly did," I said. "It was the best lecture I've heard you give. I'm still taking in what you said during the last 90 minutes. I've read a good deal about landscape architecture but have never heard the things you taught us today. Landscapes will never look the same."

"Landscapes frame our lives, do they not? As you know, with paintings it behooves us to pay attention to the frame because the frame interprets the picture. It's the same with a man. You cannot understand all the dimensions of a man until you know the landscape he grew up in." 

"What was the landscape like where you grew up?"

Saul Steinberg's famous cover,
"View of the World from Ninth Avenue"

"It was the landscape of central Illinois, in the Great River country. Of course, Saul Steinberg and the East Coast cognoscenti would laugh at my saying there's anything remarkable about it. They disparagingly call it 'flyover country.' But for people who have eyes to see, it's the very heart of America's heartland. And it's not just flat cornfields either. Interspersed with the cornfields are upland woods of oak and hickory; bottomland forests of silver maple and sycamores; and the topographic transitions between them that separate the glaciated tableland on top from the riparian floodplains below. There is even the occasional island of tall-grass prairie that makes one marvel at how hardscrabble pioneers ever tilled the soil. What pulls the entire scene together is the panoramic vastness of the Illinois prairie peninsula. The sense of space is liberating!

"This past July, when Caroline and I were driving back to my hometown of Jerseyville, I started looking at the different kinds of lines in the heartland landscape. The most dominant lines reflect the checkerboard pattern of township-and-range surveys bequeathed by Thomas Jefferson. His vision for the Old Northwest gives us those long, straight roads that follow the original survey lines. Other lines are sinuous, usually where roads follow the meandering of rivers or the curve of lakes. Still other lines characterize the way farmers grow things to conserve the soil. Most apparent are the lines of trees, windbreaks to shelter the farmhouse and barns and fields from blizzards. More subtle than the windbreaks are the lines among the crops. There are the furrows made by the plough, of course, like a Rembrandt etching that follows the contours of the land. Then there are lines separating the ocher-green of ripening corn from the dusk-green of maturing soybeans from the yellow-green of flowering milo; lines separating crop from the spring-green of grass in the creases of the hills; lines separating crop from stubble; lines separating crop from the fallow earth. I suppose only someone who grew up on a farm cares about such things, but it's the frame that interprets me."

"I'm no farmer," I said, "but on my road trips I try and understand the landscapes I drive through. There's no such thing as a boring road trip, even across the Great Plains --"

Tonsor's eyes smiled and he interrupted: "You mean where the earth ends? Once, when my family was driving across the Great Plains, my son asked if we were going to the end of the earth. I said, 'No, it's not the end of the earth, but it's what the end of the earth would look like!'"

He laughed in little puffs and I with him, saying I'd experienced the same thing with my family. "They think I'm weird because I love driving across Kansas. When I studied geography, one of the things I most enjoyed was analyzing landscapes not just for their utility but also for their beauty and sublimity. One of my favorite Willa Cather passages, from My Antonia, captures the feeling: 'I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh easy blowing wind; and in the earth itself as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide; and underneath it herds of buffalo were galloping, galloping --'"[2]

"Yes," said Tonsor in laconic affirmation. "I'd add Walt Whitman to your collection of favorite passages. He was quite smitten with the prairie lands of the Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas country. After visiting the Colorado Rockies he told a reporter that 'much as the grandeur of the mountains impressed him, the impression of the plains will remain longest with him.'[3] In Specimen Days, which is his travel log out West, he wrote: 'As to scenery ... while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone, and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but that the Prairies and Plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the aesthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.'"[4]

"Whitman got it right!" I said. "Just about anything west of the Hundredth Meridian is magical. As for Kansas country, especially in a place like the Flint Hills, both landscape and sky are sublime. Who cannot feel overwhelmed by those towering cumulonimbus clouds on a hot summer afternoon during the monsoon season. I always carry a 35 mm. camera in the car to try and capture the sublimity of those moments. Speaking of which, where did you learn about Romantic landscapes and English gardens?"

"My earliest experience of the romantic landscape, believe it or not, was also in the Illinois country. West of Champaign, along the Sangamon River, is a remarkable park on the old Allerton estate. Nowadays it's managed by the University of Illinois. But around the turn of the century, an eccentric artist and philanthropist named Robert Allerton transformed acres of prairie outside his mansion into gardens and forests. There's not only the requisite herb patch and bowling lawn, but also a parterre garden and various flower plots, all surrounded by woods and meadows that overlook the Sangamon River -- the same Sangamon River that Abraham Lincoln knew.

"Given your interest in landscape architecture, you will want to make the trek to Allerton not just for its natural beauty but also for the remarkable sculptures it contains. Perhaps in your art classes you have seen a photograph of Emil-Antoine Bourdelle's 'Death of the Last Centaur' or of Carl Milles's 'Sun Singer.' Experiencing the vistas in person leaves one alternately feeling the satisfaction of classical beauty and the awe of romantic grandeur. I'm sure this morning's lecture had its origins in the many happy hours I spent exploring the park."

"Death of the Last Centaur," by Emil-Antoine Bourdelle, Allerton Park, Monticello, IL
Photo at URL http://www.iloveallertonpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Centaure-5-8-2012.jpg

II.

Later that week I was having lunch with Tonsor and Caroline and the subject of Allerton Park came up.

"Oh, the old Allerton estate!" said Caroline, delighted by the very name. "When Stephen and I were in college we used to bicycle in the park. There was something special about leaving the cornfields behind and making your way through the dark brooding forests to 'The Sun Singer.' Stephen was quite taken by the drama of the setting."

"On one of my road trips back to Colorado, maybe I'll stop at Allerton," I said to be polite, doubtful that I would ever really get around to visiting such an out-of-the-way place.

"You should," said Tonsor authoritatively. 

III.

"The Sun Singer," mixed media, by Caroline Tonsor.
From the title page of a chapbook that Caroline Tonsor
made for Stephen Tonsor (2009)

It would be three decades before I would finally make the trek to Allerton Park and experience the work of Bourdelle and Milles in surroundings of haunting beauty.

__________

[1] For the original reference to Socrates as a torpedo fish, see Plato's dialogue Meno.

[2] Willa Cather, My Antonia.

[3] For Whitman's observation see Robert R. Hubach, "Walt Whitman in Kansas," (Topeka: Kansas Historical Society, May 1941), pp. 150-54; at URL https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-walt-whitman-in-kansas/12865. 

[4] Walt Whitman, Specimen Days (1879).

Great Plains geography 4

The loneliness of the land: Rick Dunn's photograph of the Pawnee Buttes, east of Fort Collins, Colorado. Although Colorado is regarded as the Rocky Mountain state, almost half of it extends into the Great Plains. (See Rick Dunn's essay that accompanies this photo.)


The best synonyms for the "Great Plains" are "High Plains" and "western sea of grass." James Fenimore Cooper referred to the region as "the Great Prairies west of the Mississippi" [The Last of the Mohicans, 1826, Introduction]. Other synonyms are sometimes used in popular parlance but they don't work well:

Misleading characterization 1: Great Plains = Great American Desert
The Great Plains go through periodic droughts that seem to turn the region into a wasteland. West Texas is experiencing such a drought as I write. [See article here.] But humans have also contributed to the catastrophes of the last 150 years, especially because of the over-extension of grazing and of deep plowing. As a result, ordinary drought cycles such as occurred in the second half of the 19th century were magnified during the first half of the twentieth century. One catastrophe was the so-called Dust Bowl. Such catastrophes are relatively rare. In most years since Anglo-American encroachment, the Great Plains have received adequate rainfall during the growing season to support a harvest of wheat. The eastern part of the region is wetter, an ecological garden, a veritable breadbasket. So where did the term, "Great American Desert," come from? In 1819 President James Monroe sent an American explorer named Stephen Long to explore the west. He trekked through the Great Plains in a dry spell and believed the land was inhospitable, and so labeled the region west of the 98th Meridian the Great American Desert. The moniker lasted from the 1820s to the 1870s. It's another way an early president of our nation had a surprising impact, this time on the perception of the Great Plains.

Major Stephen Long's 1820 map of the "Great American Desert." The Great Plains comprise the easternmost third of the arid Great American Desert and Great Basin.

Dust Bowl

Misleading characterization 2: Great Plains = the prairie
It would be more accurate to say that the Great Plains = shortgrass prairie. As the map below shows, the vast prairies of North America are not coterminous with the Great Plains but extend considerably to the east of the region. At the time of Columbus, the famous "prairie wedge" speared east of the Mississippi River into Illinois. In addition, there were numerous prairies islands east of the Mississippi River. But Illinois's prairie wedge and the prairie islands farther east should not be considered High Plains. Note on the map below the curious extent of prairie in Michigan, where tallgrass prairies thrived in glacially deposited, sandy, outwash plains in Newago County where the Muskegon River flows. Eventually it morphed into the so-called Big Prairie Desert because of the extent of sand and sparce vegetation. It is misleadingly regarded as the largest "desert" east of the Mississippi River.

Extent of indigenous shortgrass prairie (light green), mixed prairie grasses, and tallgrass prairie (dark green) at the time of Europeans' arrival in the Americas. A safe generalization is that the eastern extent of the Great Plains began where the tallgrass prairie ended. The climate is wetter where the tallgrass prairie thrives, and drier where the shortgrass prairie grows.

Misleading characterization 3: Great Plains = Tornado Alley
Children who see the classic, The Wizard of Oz, know Kansas has killer tornadoes. Among Great Plains states, Oklahoma is even more torn up by twisters than Kansas is. But the farther north and west one travels on the High Plains, the more rare tornadoes are. Indeed, the northern Great Plains are one of the safer places to live east of the Rockies if you are lilapsophobic.

The U.S. has at least four Tornado Alleys. The one on the Great Plains goes from north-south -- down through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. An even deadlier alley straddles the Deep South -- extending east-west across Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Note that the Great Plains state of Oklahoma is the junction of these deadly Tornado Alleys. But the farther north one goes on the High Plains, the rarer tornadoes are. Boston, Massachusetts, has far more tornadoes than Billings, Montana.  

There are far more night twisters in the Deep South's Tornado Alley than in the Great Plains' Tornado Alley.

Misleading characterization 4: Great Plains = Corn Belt

Although the Corn Palace is in Mitchell, South Dakota, corn only thrives in the bottomlands and irrigated tracts of the High Plains. True, the eastern part of the Great Plains has the climate, soil, and water to grow robust harvests of corn. Yet the High Plains are better known for spring and winter wheat. They are really part of the wheat belt because wheat can withstand arid conditions better than corn can. And because wheat grows here, there are cattle -- lots of cattle. Great Plains wheat sustained the long cattle drives after the Civil War. Not many people know that Theodore Roosevelt spent time as a cattleman on the Great Plains. Retreating from civilization after the deaths of his wife and mother on Valentine's Day, 1884, TR resigned from the New York Assembly and went to Dakota Territory where he invested in two ranches and worked as a cowboy.

Corn grows well in the eastern parts of the Great Plains, as well as in the bottomlands of the High Plains, but the region is better known for wheat and the cattle fattened by it.



Misleading characterization 5: Great Plains = Midwest
For the practical needs of the classroom, teachers break down the Continental U.S. into manageable chunks of states. Somewhat arbitrarily, they have drawn a line around a bloc of 12 states in the north-central part of the nation -- from Ohio and Michigan in the east to Kansas and North Dakota in the west -- and labeled them "the Midwest." Only four of the Great Plains states are technically in the Midwest: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. Even these states have more of a western than a midwestern feel, what with their rodeos and rangeland the closer one gets to the Rockies. The High Plains also extend into three states of the Southwest -- Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico -- as well into three states of the Mountain West: Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. So the Great Plains stretch across three somewhat artificially designated regions. Depending on the place, one can feel the tug of the Midwest, West, and Southwest in the grasslands.

From the perspective of elementary geography textbooks, the Great Plains spread across three major geographic provinces. The Great Plains include the westernmost states of the Midwest (in red) -- North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. This western sea of grass also stretches into parts of the Southwest and Mountain West.

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SOURCES

For the Internet source of each photograph, map, and illustration used in this essay, click on the image.

Additional sources that I consulted are available through the hyperlinks in the text, or below.

For a bibliography of Great Plains geography, consult http://libguides.emporia.edu/content.php?pid=60124

Oklahoma is discussed at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/G/GR015.html

Theodore Roosevelt, cowboy
"I never would have been president if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota."

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This photo-essay is part of a series on Great Plains geography.