Consider my parents. My mother did not know any geomorphology or landscape ecology. Yet she enjoyed her familiar, Southern US rural land- scapes. My father enjoyed the fertility of the soils in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia; he admired a good field. On visits around, he would take a spade and turn the soil to see whether it might make a good garden. He always knew what watershed he was in, what crops were growing where. He loved a good rain. Both enjoyed the changing seasons, the dogwood and redbud in the hills in the spring, the brilliant and subtle colours.
