I found the focus on the theme of Man vs Nature in Meinig’s 10 perspectives on landscapes very intriguing. I had never thought about visualizing a landscape as such a battleground between man and nature before. I think that each way of looking at landscape had its strengths as well as its weaknesses. There was no one way that stood out to me as the way that I would always want to look at a landscape, rather each one represented a different lens for observing a landscape that would only be ideal for a specific setting. This reminded me about the Harvey reading and our discussion on the relational view of spacetime. In the relational view Harvey claims that it is “impossible to disentangle space and time” because of the “relationalities” that subjectively and subconsciously exist for all of us (Harvey 14). The relationalities between man and nature in many of Meinig’s perspectives on landscape make visualizing the landscape a relational view. For example, the landscape as nature view requires the viewer to see man as “miniscule” and all of his creations as “mere scratchings on the skin of Mother Earth” (Meinig 34). On the other hand, the artifact view takes the perspective that nature only “provides a stage” for man and his creations, so that no pristine nature actually exists and all is tainted by man to varying degrees. Many of Meinig’s other perspectives on landscape share the man vs nature theme too. The ability to look at landscapes through different lenses and perspectives I think is a necessary and important process towards artistic expression. Going forward in the course as we look at different landscapes of coastal Maine through photography, painting and other art forms, determining the lens or perspective used by the artist will become valuable to our understanding of the artists message and purpose for choosing that specific landscape.