Running head: GATEWAY LOOP TRAIL: RHETORIC OF TIGHT PLACES, OPEN SPACES

Gateway Loop Trail: Rhetoric of Tight Places and Open Spaces Ethan M. Riley COM-698: Environmental Rhetoric Dec. 12, 2011

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Gateway Loop Trail: Rhetoric of Tight Places and Open Spaces Nature is not something you go to; you experience it ... slowly. You take nature as it comes, and at the gradual pace and in the poetry it decides to reveal itself with--the coos and song of birds, the lengthening of shadows in midday, the pastel hues that hang over the desert at dusk. In nature, some rhetoric is quiescent; they are the ones that articulate at a whisper and require investments of time and silence to hear them. Other rhetoric cannot be ignored because it is intertwined with the hustle and hum of everyday life. This essay analyzes an example of the quiescent type--the Gateway Loop Trail in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve spans 17,000 acres and includes the McDowell Mountains, a range called mountains of discovery because of its unique geological features, and the Marcus Landslide (City of Scottsdale, 2011). Formally created in October 1994, management of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is financed (e.g., facilities maintenance and land purchases) with tax revenues. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve Commission oversees the Preserve and provides input on land acquisitions, while the nonprofit McDowell Sonoran Conservancy supports the preservation efforts of the City of Scottsdale through public education and volunteerism (City of Scottsdale). The Gateway Access Area, 18333 N. Thompson Peak Pkwy, in Scottsdale is one of three formal entry points (e.g., the Sunrise Access Area and the Lost Dog Wash Access Area) to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. The Gateway Access Area (also called the Gateway to the McDowell Preserve and hereafter referred to as Gateway) is the largest and features various amenities, including restrooms, shaded armadas, interpretive displays, drinking fountains for

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hikers and pets, an outdoor amphitheater, and the wheelchair-accessible Bajada Nature Trail (.5 mile). Recreationists can also enter the Preserve from the WestWorld, Quartz, Ringtail, and 136th Street trailheads (City of Scottsdale, 2011). The access areas and trailheads are designed to fade into the surroundings and fit unobtrusively into the existing landscape (City of Scottsdale, 2010). The Gateway Loop Trail From Gateway, hikers can access numerous trails of varying lengths and relative difficulties, including the Gateway Loop Trail (hereafter called the Gateway Loop), a 3.6 mile hike of moderate difficulty with an elevation change of 625 feet (City of Scottsdale Preservation Division, 2010). The Gateway Loop is defined by the City of Scottsdale as a Preserve Primary Trail, meaning its aim is to provide safe and enjoyable trail recreation opportunities within preserved open space areas of the city, while having a minimum impact on the surround environment (City of Scottsdale, 2010, section 8-3.001). Preserve trails are design according to formalized guidelines established by the City of Scottsdale and published in the Design Standards and Policies Manual. Every trail is drawn, built, and maintained so as to protect the integrity of the land to the greatest extent possible (City of Scottsdale Preservation Division, 2005, p. 26). Native plants and sensitive wildlife habitat influence trail design. Trails are drawn to have avoid disturbance of and have a minimum effect (City of Scottsdale, section 8-3.101) on 18 varieties of plants, including saguaro and barrel cacti, mesquite, and ocotillo, and to avoid fragile areas inhabited by desert wildlife. This essay examines the design and construction of the Gateway Loop as a paradigm of rhetoric of display, which, according to Lawrence Prelli (2006), entails the process of selecting

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which arguments to reveal and which to conceal in the invention of rhetoric. Preserve primary trails (City of Scottsdale, 2010, section 8-3.001) are examples of rhetoric of display in that they depict preferred truths and marginalize others. Displays, observes Prelli, take a variety of epideictic sometimes conventional forms; they can be concrete like a globe or ambiguous like a protest. Displays are manifested theoretically through the verbally generated image in speeches and literature. Displays appear rhetorically in sketches, paintings, maps, statistical graphs, photographs, and television and film images. Displays are manifested rhetorically in the homes we inhabit and in the many places we visitmuseum and exhibitions, memorials and statuary, parks and cemeteries, casinos and theme parks, neighborhood street corners and stores. Displays are manifested rhetorically in the demonstration of scientific finding, of a political grievance, or a preferred identity. In whatever manifestation, displays also anticipate a responding audience whose expectations might be satisfied or frustrated, their values and interests affirmed, neglected, or challenged. (cited in Herrick, 2009, p. 270) Nominal literature was found on the rhetoric of display aside from Prellis text; consequently, studies concerned with the related concept of visual rhetoric were also consulted. Select works from Vivan (2011), Dyehouse (2011), Foss (1982) were surveyed for insights into the use of displays (e.g., visuals) to create a particular reality or world, the meaning of which emerges only through interaction between the artist [or trail designer] and the viewer [or hiker] (Foss, p. 55). Dyehouses survey of displays at American Museum of Natural History reinforces the need for collaboration between archivist and patron, introduces the term patterning, and observes

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that science popularization is understood as simplifying (or vulgarizing) scientists more complex forms of discourse (p. 330). The practice of befouling science and nature is applicable to the subsequent argument. Additionally, case studies of Disneylands Frontierland by Francaviglia (1999) and Steiner (1998) served as archetypes for my rhetorical reading of Gateway Loop. Specifically, the authors treatment of Frontierland as architectural packaging (Steiner) and stylized allegory (Francaviglia) proved applicable to the study of the Gateway Loop and its depiction of the Sonoran landscape and the nature--culture dialectic.

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The Gateway Loop is a bifurcated rhetoric. The dominant rhetoric (or rhetoric of open space) satisfies our anthropocentric arrogance and desire for control of empty (a word synonymous with idleness and meaninglessness in our post-industrial revolution vernacular) spaces through the inclusion of a scenic point near the Gateway Loop summit (the trails highest elevation is 3,212 feet). The marginalized rhetoric of tight spaces is one of context, perspective, and micro and meso realities. The ineffable details that make technology intuitive, ideas relevant, and inspire Daniel-Booneing (Leopold, 1949, p. 177) are examples of rhetoric of tight spaces in so much as they are incongruous with governing, wholistic rhetoric(s). Society prefers encyclopedic depictions, displays, and designs that reflect Ciceros idea of a broadly educated (Herrick, 2009, p. 108) rhetor and present communication trends (consider how modern technologies sired a communication zeitgeist that values acronyms, abbreviations, and shorthand). Ironically, despite a societal fixation with precision and detail, we live in a widescreen culture of generalizations. Scenic Points: Rhetoric of Open Spaces Hikers encounter many inspirational views along the Gateway Loop, but the signature vista is that of Scottsdale and Phoenix as seen from an appointed scenic point near the Gateway Saddle. Like the spectacle of Frontierland, the view from Gateway Saddle is a crafted sequence of camera shots: long, establishing views; medium shots; and close-ups (Steiner, 1998, p. 11). The sprawling city below strikes bystanders with a strange visual effect. Strange in that the audience is confronted with a panoptic vision of American Expansion (Francaviglia, 1999, p. 165) couched in a voyeuristic visual of the Phoenix Metro Area. People look at nature as an external phenomenon, yet theyll splurge to surround themselves in a faux feeling of

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wilderness. People mortgage lake-front property, hire landscapers, lease SUVs, and live in lowlight communities that package nature as a series of memorable physical or scenic features into which human activity was placed (Francaviglia, p. 165). Nature is something we want just close enough to see, hear, and leverage (e.g., raise property values).

It is important to distinguish the scenic point along the Gateway Loop as a human invention that favors a objective reading of the Sonoran Preserve, the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and our hegemonic control over the environment. The scenic point makes the same rhetorical impression as does a raised desk. People raise their desks in a passive-aggressive move to make themselves feel powerful. Likewise, placing the scenic point at or near the high point of the trail not only provides the best views of the valley, but foments feelings of authority. There is a psychology behind capturing and holding the high ground. Annexing the high ground is important to the suasory effect of the Gateway Loop; moreover, it is recognized by the City of Scottsdale (2010) as a paramount design factor.

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Visual qualities are important to trail users, [sic] therefore trails should be designed to blend with the surrounding environment. Views from the trail to the surrounding environment should also be considered. Trial users enjoy changes in scenery, thus increasing demand for loop trails and trail networks that allow the user to return to the starting point without traveling the same trail twice. (section 8-3.101) Presumably, the site of the scenic point was chosen with visual rhetoric in mind. The view is impressive, but also articulates the ongoing tension between nature and culture. The boundary divorcing environment from civilization is sandwiched between the wildness of the Sonoran Preserve in the foreground, and the bustle of progress, which occupies the background and extends into the horizon. Whereas foreground images should have the most detail, the audiences eye is drawn to the horizon. Nature, the WUI, and their consubstantial rhetorics are summarily scaled (or reduced) to replicas more satisfying than the real thing, [where] perfectly predictable adventures [and futures] supply a sense of mastery and reassurance (Steiner, 1998, p. 11). The view from Gateway Saddle is beautiful despite its amorphous presentation of the WUI. The scenic point is comparable to the window analogy made by George Wald and included in Silent Spring. [A] very narrow window through which at a distance one can see only a crack of light, wrote Wald of his research into the visual pigments of the eye. As one comes closer the view grows wider and wider, until finally through this same narrow window one is looking at the universe (cited in Carson, 1962, p. 199). The view from the scenic point is claustrophobic in spite of its panoptic breadth. One cannot see nature or experience wildness from this elevated roost, because nature is in the details. It is the artistry of a spiders web, the intricate beading of a Gila Monster, and the erosional whitewashing of sandstone by water, wind, and time. These

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incongruities (i.e., the narrow fits and tight spaces) are most often ignored in favor of commoditized perversions of nature cropped for postcards and picturesque backdrops for Jeep commercials (Meister, 1997). Whereas the Gateway Loops mostly fails to depict fractalized nature (a nature of perfect imperfections), it can be interpreted as a threshold to discovering natures incongruities. Taken at face value, views from Gateway Saddle trivialize nature as scenery, a term that demeans nature to a setting and marginalizes its quintessence. But the scenic point can also be read as an invitation to transform abstract concepts and flat images into lived experience (Steiner, 1998, p. 6) and discover the meticulous architecture and tight places of the Sonoran desert. Trail Design: Rhetoric of Tight Places Leopold (1949) wrote in A Sand County Almanac that there was no more wilderness; no places of wildness spared by mans anthropocentrism. Despite peoples best efforts to engineer wilderness in preservation of recreation, science, and/or habitat, there is always the tarnish of artificiality. Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow, writes Leopold. Invasion can be arrested or modified but the creation of a new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible (p. 200). It is the charge of trail designers, stewards, and hikers to achieve presence and discover refuges of wildness--the unnamed and oft unseen topographies such as the tight places, narrow crevices, recessed nooks, and snug alcoves that scale (or reduce) a space, rouse a sense of presence, and force visitors into negotiations over the micro- and mesomeanings of place. Rachel Carson (1962) observed that natures real value is not a low-hanging fruit to be read and effortlessly understood; rather, nature obliges audiences to seek personal meaning.

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Most of us walk unseeing through the world, unaware alike of its beauties, its wonders, and the strange and sometimes terrible intensity of the lives that are being lived about us. ... We see with understanding eye only if we have walked in the garden at night and here and there with a flashlight have glimpsed the mantis stealthily creeping upon its prey. Then we sense something of the drama of the hunter and the hunted. Then we begin to feel something of that relentlessly pressing force by which nature controls her own. (Carson, 1962, p. 249)

The original Frontierland design accentuated tight places through a process of selective compression (Francaviglia, 1999), a modeling technique in which the character of a large object (e.g., Earth), event (e.g., the Battle of Gettysburg), or idea (e.g., Manifest Destiny) is reduced in size and inconsequential details omitted to accommodate an available space, primed audience,

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or preferred interpretation. Frontierland was designed to aggrandize icons and symbols that would instruct individuals how to view places and the people who occupy (or should occupy) them (Francaviglia, pp. 169-170). Globes, cycloramas, memorials, and the Gateway Loop are examples of selective compression in that they articulate a sort of sedated familiarity. In fact, the City of Scottsdale observes that Loop trails ... provide the comfort of knowing that the trail will return to the starting point, thus reducing the change of anyone becoming lost (City of Scottsdale, 2010). People are fear being lost, apprehensive of getting lost in something, and panicky about losing track of time. This is the reason the foreground and the tight places in actual nature, semiotic meaning, and rhetorical discourse are often overlooked and sometimes avoided. Dyehouse (2011) observes that the Evolution of the Horse display at the American Museum of History exhibits a sophistication that differs from that attained by forms of visual inscription typically employed by scientists (p. 300), thereby implying that most popular science is a dilution of scientific discourse; the Gateway Loop rates somewhere between simple and sophisticated. The scenic point panders to the oh, by the way spectator. The views are picturesque but passive, intimidating the onlooker into a monotone reading of nature that emphasizes mans hegemony over nature. Conversely, the entirety of the 3.6 loop trail acts as an arbiter between nature and the hiker that requires renegotiating meanings. Unlike the scenic point, the trail is not a fixed point but a string of moments and cycloramic vistas that change with every movement. Gateway Loop grants immediate and intimate access to the tight spaces of nature. Loop hikers are within investigative reach of desert flora, fauna, and architectural curiosities. Moreover, the inquisitive hiker does not chance getting lost because a variety of

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natures incongruities hug the trail along every bend, drop, and incline. The Gateway Loop performs as reified tour talk from Glacier National Park (Carbaugh & Rudnick, 2006) in that the trail, more so than the scenic point, tiptoes the multiple senses of a place between sellable objectives and entertainment, offering accurate information, coherent tales, and multiple perspectives (p. 182). Our interpretation of nature is inuenced by the design to the Gateway Loop design (i.e., protection from disorientation), yet the ratio of trail to nature is disproportionate enough to accommodate all projected meanings. Conclusion I have heard it said that seeing is believing. The only problem is that what we see is often the belief of marketers, architects, programmers, and government. The Gateway Loop is a bifurcated rhetoric demonstrative of mans contradictory search for hegemonic order and a kind of rhetorical catharsis achieved through relational symmetry (nature and culture) and presence of being. Presence is a principal antecedent to change, and a salient issue in much of the environmental rhetoric read for this course; in particular, that of Carson (1962) and Leopold (1949). Presence is realized by inclusive and exclusive means in the design of the Gateway Loop. The scenic point--an appointed spot of visual distinction--is superficial, serving more as consignment rhetoric than a heuristic lure. Hikers become bystanders, who are neither expected, required, nor invited to participate in the invention of meaning. The meaning of the view is decided for hikers in this canned reading of the Sonoran Preserve. The same human desire for order and facilitated use is reflected in the City of Scottsdales trail design (City of Scottsdale Preservation Division, 2009). Trail users tend to favor the easiest, most obvious route. If the

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designated trail is not the easiest and most obvious, trail users will begin to create new, unauthorized trails (City of Scottsdale, 2010). This is rhetoric of open spaces. Rhetoric of tight places--as the name might imply--is communicated in appeals of moderate to difficult difficulty that require patience and participation. The Gateway Loop dips, elevates, and snakes through an unspoiled habitat where every contour primes the hiker for the next scene. The trail is an architectural tour of a conceptualized landscape depicted as a constructed setting taken for granted like circumambient air we breathe (Steiner, 1998, p. 8). The desert is a real biome, but our comprehension of the desert topography is constructed, in part through naming (Carbaugh & Rudnick, 2006). The features, process, and displays that we know too much or too little about are marginalized as incongruities (or subterfuges against the dominant meaning or rhetoric). As an example of rhetoric of display, the trail favors sustainable interpretations of the Sonoran Preserve that link a vivid narrative about the region to a design that could sustain the story line (Francaviglia, 1999, p. 163). Future research might consider scenic views from other WUI trails. What do inverse (or introspective) views like that found from Gateway Saddle imply about mans relation to nature? Furthermore, can the concepts fundamental to tight places and open spaces be applied to other rhetorical displays and suasory artifacts. What similarities are there between the Gateway Loop and, for example, the Gettysburg Cyclorama or observatories? How do these texts reify presence, and articulate the tension between distance, space, and place? How does the rhetorical and physical size of the Gettysburg Cyclorama, the vastness of space, the structure of a honeycomb, or the ergonomic contour of an iPhone affect the audience? Rhetorical studies of architecture,

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user experience design, and display could answer some of these questions, and engender exciting new ones.

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References Carbaugh, D., & Rudnick, L. (2006). Which place, which story? Cultural discourses at the border of the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier National Park. Great Plains Quarterly, 26, 167-184. Carson, R. (1962). Silent Spring (Fortieth Anniversary Edition). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. City of Scottsdale. (2010). Streetscapes, parks & trails. In Design standards & policies manual. Scottsdale, AZ: City of Scottsdale. City of Scottsdale. (2011). Scottsdales McDowell Sonoran Preserve [Webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/preserve City of Scottsdale Preservation Division. (2005). Bell Pass and Bell Loop trail construction technical specifications (Invitation for bid #06PB059). Scottsdale, AZ: City of Scottsdale. City of Scottsdale Preservation Division. (2009). Trails of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. Retrieved from http://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/Assets/Public+Website/preserve/Preserve +Trail+Map.pdf City of Scottsdale Preservation Division. (2010). Scottsdales McDowell Sonoran Preserve trails [Brochure]. Scottsdale, AZ: City of Scottsdale. Dyehouse, J. (2011). A textbook case revisited: Visual rhetoric and series patterning in the American Museum of Natural Historys horse evolution displays. Technical Communication Quarterly, 20(3), 327-346.

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Foss, S.K. (1982). Rhetoric and the visual image: A resource unit. Communication Education, 31, 55-66. Francaviglia, R. (1999). Walt Disneys Frontierland as an allegorical map of the American West. Western Historical Quarterly, 30, 155-182. Hike Arizona (2008, January). Coming down the loop from the saddle [Photograph]. Gateway Loop TrailMcDowells, AZ. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/vd5SXf Leopold, A. (1949). A Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There (Special Commemorative Edition). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Herrick, J. A. (2009). The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction (Fourth Edition). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Meister, M. (1997). Sustainable development in visual imagery: Rhetorical function in the Jeep Cherokee. Communication Quarterly, 45(3), 223-234. Steiner, M. (1998). Frontierland as Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the architectural packaging of the mythic West. Montana, 48(1), 2-17. Take a Hike Arizona (2010, April). Gateway Loop trail [Photograph]. McDowell Mountain Hikes-Half Day. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/udfwFp Vivian, B. (2011). A review of: Rhetorics of Display, by Lawrence J. Prelli. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 41(1), 89-93.