I missed a book on my list yesterday, and its turning out to be an interesting read. Window Seat, Reading the Landscape from the Air is really meant for people who spend a lot of time in an airplane, but with the amount of time I'm devoting to Google Earth - looking for places to visit, and sites to stop - I'm seeing basically the same type of thing. Now, granted I can zoom in and see more than a passenger at 35,000 feet, its still nice to know what those circular fields are stacked together in the center of the country. (answer: fields that are watered from a pivot waterer. Each field has its own, hence the corners get cut off.)
--R.
2 comments:
One of the more interesting things I've learned is the way the author puts things into categories. he has 4 layers to look at the earth. "The layers most useful in making sense of what you see out your window are, from the bottom up, rock, water, plants, and people. Each of them, younger and more ephemeral than the last, is dependent on the patterns of the previous layer for many of its features."
Imagine a Mountain - it collects rain from the atmosphere and forms a river. Where the river flows and gets deep a forest grows from the nutrition it provides. because of the natural resources contained there, people settle, and change the landscape... Everything on earth is about a relationship.
I just finished this book and found it to really be quite informative. The geological information was very nice and will give me a good backround to explain things to the kids. The atmosphere info was simple and straightforward and will allow me to answer the simple question - why is the sky bule in an understandable matter - invaluable at any price ;)
If anyone is looking for some background into why things look the way they do and how they got to be that way - from a satellite view, this is an excellent read.
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