Criteria for Reading the Landscape

There is a place nestled in the hills of Sonoma where the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond are visible. Many people are unaware of this place because to get to it one must diverge off the normal hiking trails in the mountains of North West Sonoma. We call this place "The Plat". The view from this mountain top is breath taking to anyone who ventures up the hill. Many of our friends have gathered here for social gatherings on the weekends and others in the small town have similar ideas so it is a way of socializing with different types of people that you would not normally talk to. I enjoyed these gatherings at the Plat before the trail was blocked off by a barbed wire fence because of the different people i was able to interact with once we hiked up. My friends in particular loved this place because it was a great way to workout for athletics at our high school. We would start at the very bottom of the hill and run all the way up to the Plat. It would take a good 20 minutes with resting a few times but once the long uphill run through the alluvial hills was completed I would feel replenished and ready to compete. Almost every athlete that I am close friends with has made the run up to the Plat at some point in their high school career. What makes The Plat so special is the rich history it has held through decades. I was talking to one of my fathers close friends and he said he would hike to the Plat with his friends when he was in high school as well. Proving my point that the Plat is well known amongst nearly all people living in Sonoma, which makes it so notoriously historic.
When Paul Groth speaks of a healthy landscape that connects its participants to continuity and when the landscape connects its participants to important social groups is what I think best explains the qualities of both The Plat and K-Mart. K-Mart has to accept all types of people socially because they are a business, that seems almost like a given. However when different groups gather at the Plat there is not always a sense of friendliness unless an outgoing friend in one group tries to produce conversation. This simple friendly conversation connects the two groups and a healthy relationship is built so the next time two groups similar to these meet, there is no sense of hostility. In the case of K-Mart, the corporation had been in existence for decades because of its ability to put the consumer first in the line of business giving the customer a sense of superiority when shopping here. This is partly what makes some businesses so successful today. As long as companies in the future provide good continuous customer service and maintain this good reputation, as K-Mart did in the past, they shall be successful.