The poet Marianne Moore famously wrote of 'real toads in imaginary gardens,' and the labyrinth offers us the possibility of being real creatures in symbolic space...In such spaces as the labyrinth we cross over [between real and imaginary spaces]; we are really travelling, even if the destination is only symbolic.
Rebecca SolnitLeave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. Thatโs where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
Rebecca SolnitWhen I think about, say, 1995, or whever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago. ... Time passed in fairly large units, or at least not in milliseconds and constant updates. A few hours wasn't such a long time to go between moments of contact with your work, your people or your trivia.
Rebecca SolnitA lone peak of high point is a natural focal point in the landscape, something by which both travelers and local orient themselves. In the continuum of landscape, mountains are discontinuity -- culminating in high points, natural barriers, unearthly earth.
Rebecca SolnitMusing takes place in a kind of meadowlands of the imagination, a part of the imagination that has not yet been plowed, developed, or put to any immediately practical useโฆtime spent there is not work time, yet without that time the mind becomes sterile, dull, domesticated. The fight for free space โ for wilderness and public space โ must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space.
Rebecca SolnitWalking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them.
Rebecca SolnitPerhaps the central question about [Eliot] Porter's work is about the relationship between science, aesthetics, and environmental politics. His brother, the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, wrote in a 1960 review of [Porter's] colour photographs: 'There is no subject and background, every corner is alive,' and this suggests what an ecological aesthetic might look like.
Rebecca Solnit