Marking a life

The following piece of life-writing explores how landscapes are one of the means by which we mark the mystery of ‘a life’. Through a number of autobiographical snippets, it illustrates how landscapes emerge in response to problems that defy explanation and comprehension. The life (and death) these stories attempt to trace is profoundly mysterious. But it is precisely this impenetrability that solicits a desire to mark it. In this sense, the origin of landscape does not reside in a desire to represent interior meanings but in existential questions and problems that reside fundamentally outside us. © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Katja Hilevaara and Emily Orley