Landscape
Lake Itasca, the official source of the Mississippi River and a scenic area of northern Minnesota, has remained relatively unchanged from its natural state. Most of the area has a heavy growth of timber that includes virgin red pine, which is also Minnesota's state tree. Some of the red pine in Itasca are over 200 years old.
The Itasca terrain is sometimes referred to as "knob and kettle." The knobs are mounds of debris deposited directly by the ice near the edge of glaciers or by melt–water streams flowing on or under the glacier's surface. The kettles are depressions, usually filled with water, formed by dormant ice masses buried or partially buried under glacial debris that later melted. The retreat of the ice around 10,000 years ago left behind 157 lakes of varying size that cover 3,000 acres (12 km2) of Itasca State Park. The glaciers deposited a moraine, a combination of silt, clay, sand, and gravel that covers the landscape to a depth of around 680 feet (210 m). The park also integrates 27,500 acres (111 km2) of upland and 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) of swamp.
Read more about this topic: Itasca State Park
Famous quotes containing the word landscape:
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“When it comes, the Landscape listens—
Shadows—hold their breath—
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)