Community Conversations

The View

A position paper by Dr. Deland S. Anderson regarding Community Conversations held at the Pratt Museum on 26 April 2002.

A diverse group of some twenty people turned out to discuss a topic near and dear to all of us: the view. Human nature being what it is, however, even this standard was called into question. The facilitator’s opening remarks were scarcely concluded when one participant echoed a common, crass sentiment in these parts: Yeah, but ya can’t eat the view! Nevertheless, we found ample evidence that the view is an important factor in everyone’s life here. The same was true for the earliest settlers here, as well as, we suspect, for the native populations that once inhabited now abandoned viewpoints. But the view is changing. Not just what one sees — that is obvious in a growing frontier community — but how one sees as well. Some people talked, for example, about how the old timers were “out in it all the time”, and so came to take the view for granted, though they didn’t necessarily devalue it. Today, however, more and more people spend the majority of their time indoors, whether at work, home, shopping, or in the car. Because people living this style of life are deprived of the view, the view has become thematic in this community. No longer just the backdrop of native or frontier life, the view has become a valuable commodity, a limited resource, a matter of social status, and an item for connoisseurs. Yet one homesteader in the area remarked that the view serves the same purpose for her today as it did sixty years ago — when she’s upset, she finds a promontory. A consensus formed around this remark, as many others nodded in agreement with this sentiment: the view sustains us.

But what view? As one participant pointed out, everyone sees a different view. This stimulated comments from various people. One remarked that when visitors come over Baycrest Hill and see “that view”, their experiences in Kachemak Bay are forever tied to that initial look: whatever it looks like when you crest that hill, that’s what becomes your image of the community. One doesn’t worry about what it used to look like or how it has changed — one just takes it for what it is. Another person responded that when he first came to Homer, there was no road, so his first view of the area was from the air, a much less dramatic scene. But when he began to settle into his homestead property on the ridge, he was taken aback by the vastness of the view. It was too much, and so he immediately began to plant trees to limit his exposure to the view. The facilitator remarked that this “existential gasp” is not at all uncommon amongst visitors to the area, especially among those who are used to the foreshortened horizons of an urban landscape, forested neighborhoods, or hill country. The layout of the town and surrounding settlement on the Homer side of the bay directly reflects peoples desire for the view. The town of Homer is built on contour lines with businesses and homes facing south toward the sun, the water, and the view. Many dwellings are oriented so they face the sun at its zenith. Others are directed toward the builder’s favorite view. The general effect is that settlement in the area defies the grid so common in other American settlements. The real estate market is influenced by the presence of the view and discriminates many different grades of “the view” and even some alternative views. Terms such as “killer view”, “million dollar view”, “stunning view”, “emerging view”, “inlet view”, “backcountry view”, “volcano view”, and “peek-a-boo view” describe the view-as- commodity. We even have a “No View” street in Homer (a very low-end neighborhood.) A few people remarked that they get their view on the drive to town, underscoring the fact of public access to this commodity. Facilitator Anderson distinguished different categories of view, noting that some residents seem to be influenced by the “penthouse effect” — building up high, so they can look down on the town from gated communities—while others are swayed by the “wharf effect” — building on the water so as to have humanity behind them. It was noted that some homes in the area are conspicuous for the cost of their view. Some are positioned in precarious places on the bluff above the ocean, while others involve extensive roads, power, and phone support. Both of these types of homes are subject to much greater structural liability than those dwellings that balance a desire for the view with the necessity of hiding from the weather and its effects. They also raise concerns about the cost of these homes to the community in general. Someone coined the term “vanity view” to describe this phenomenon.

As the conversation transpired, other less obvious aspects of the view began to emerge. What of changes to the view? The die-off of the spruce forest has had profound effects on view, especially on a smaller scale — one discovers neighbors one didn’t know were there; one looks out upon gray rather than green forests; one witnesses an emerging view everywhere. Because of this die-off power line and road corridors are being cut wider into the dying forest. Logging is booming in anticipation of the bust to come with timber rot. Clearing defensive space around dwellings is apparent on all fronts. The burning of slash is ubiquitous. A general effect of this is that the grid has come to lay its distinctive mark upon the landscape — geometrical shapes and lines are fast obscuring organic patterns in the landscape. While the view from the Homer side across the bay is changing very slowly (aside from the dying forest), the opposite view is changing exponentially, with new construction filling up the Homer bench. This is most obvious at night, as the lights of new development are multiplying rapidly, and not just the numbers of lights, but also the types of lights make a difference. One incandescent bulb hanging on the side of a shed is as nothing compared to a mercury vapor or quartz security light in the yard or along a roadway. Someone remarked how the night sky, which we have so long taken for granted, is now under serious threat. Why, she remarked, some people Outside live in cities where they never see the stars. This prompted an anecdote from one participant. Years ago his mother came to visit for the first time at his homestead. That night, as she scanned the surroundings, she asked, “Where are all the lights?” One person remarked that people’s disregard for light pollution makes it much harder for him to pursue his profession as an astronomical photographer. Recent oil and gas drilling to the north of Homer, for example, has seriously compromised nighttime views from the southern peninsula. Others remarked on how ineffectual security lights are in Homer. They more often blind one than aid one’s night vision. And some, as those on the hospital and Tesoro station are downright dangerous, for they block out everything but themselves.

In addition to remarking changes to the view, several participants picked up on what is always changing in the view. The seasonal changes wheel by us at a fast pace. Changes in snow cover, vegetation, light, etc. are rapid and inevitable. Watch the clouds, remarked a fisherman in the group, they are always changing on the peaks. The water is never the same, added another. And what about the volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches and landslides — this country is still being built, exclaimed a third.

For a while the group talked about the effects, if any, the view has on young people who grown up here. Many of them don’t know anything else, one person remarked, so they don’t think anything of it. We have baseball fields here with world-class views, but the kids don’t look up, he added. But another participant, who had grown up in Homer, had a different perspective. She remarked that when her family traveled Outside to visit Yellowstone Park –a famously stunning piece of country — she and her sister had been let down by the small scale of the land and the spindly trees. Compared to Kachemak Bay, she added, it wasn’t much. Also, she said, she had often noticed over the years that when busloads of wired, tired kids topped Baycrest Hill on their way back to Homer from sporting events or the like, a hush would often fall over the kids—they sensed the view, even if it was dark and they weren’t aware of it. In response to this insight, the facilitator referenced psychological and sociological studies indicating that the larger the scale of the view available to people, the slower they perceive time to flow, and consequently the calmer they become. The facilitator’s concluding comments were along these lines: perhaps our unique view contributes greatly to our sense of ease and well being in this community and to an overall sense of good will. But, if we foreshorten our horizon by staying indoors more and by developing urban corridors without views, we will begin to feel more harried and less charitable. Would this lead to a revaluation of the view for our lives here? Will we come to define sustenance more in terms of our “standard of living” than in relation to our spectacular view?