this vegetation becomes a way of knowing. Which plants survive? Which plants do not resist? This is a species-by-species field observation through which I learn which ones have the capacity to reach the soil’s deeper layers, with higher humidity, and by doing this, may grow straight even in the most adverse environments. In walking I have become a fan of the strawberry tree – Arbutus unedo – which can survive straight under the most severe conditions; a symbol of an equal resilience that can mean the survival of a Mediterranean landscape on the threshold of desertification. The awareness of what kind of vegetation can safeguard our soils without access to artificial irrigation can be a key understanding of how to avoid the expanse of the desert. Our combined thoughts have also made me remember our Orlando Ribeiro, whom we greatly admire, and who was a keen walker and scientist who gathered knowledge of the world by walking the landscape. The ritual and repeated walks that bring awareness.
T: Yes, Orlando Ribeiro deserves a proper introduction at the end of our conversation. His seminal geography was made by walking for observational landscape fieldwork and ethnography. But he was also one of the first geographers to ever understand the importance of not only borders and boundaries – something crucial in geography, geology, geo-ecology – but also contact gradients that result from overlaps between different zones, eco-socio- cultural tones if we may. 22 I could risk it and say that he was arguably one of the most influential European geo-ethnographers of the twentieth century. And all of this with constant and relentless walking. He was, indeed, a professional walker.
22 Orlando Ribeiro first theorised the notion of contact zones with his seminal work, as a student and young geographer of Portugal’s Serra da Arrábida, and later on inland regions in the country, such as Beira Baixa.
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on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 43
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