Suchantke’s beautiful descriptions and illustrations alone are delightful, but his real interest is a new way of seeing the physical landscape. His approach is based on precise observation, which is not then just analyzed reductively but recreated in an act of imagination. Nature is then experienced as a form of meaning, a language. Suchantke explains how the quality of our relationship to nature is determined by how well we understand this language. The practical use of imagination is thus an ecological activity.

“If Andreas Suchantke is right . . . this lays a great responsibility on us. It means we have the freedom to develop the sensibilities that meet the needs of the planet—or not. Here we see the full significance of the ecology of imagination. If there is ever to be a viable organism encompassing the polarity of nature and culture, then imagination will have the role of mediator. Andreas Suchantke, as this book bears witness, is someone we might emulate on this score.”
—Norman Skillen, from the Introduction

Suchantke’s essay “Juvenilization in Evolution and Its Ecological Significance” (Chapter 5) throws a new light on evolution; the emerging picture is breathtaking, exhilarating!

Contents

Introduction by Norman Skillen

Ngorongoro: Primeval Past as Living Present

Africa: Three Landscapes as a Single Organism

What Do Rainforests Have to Do with Us?

Humankind and Nature in Different Cultures and Continents

Juvenilization in Evolution and Its Ecological Significance

New Zealand: Old Land, Young Land

The Signature of the Great Rift Valleys

Reference