The Parallax of Landscape: Situating Celaque National Park, Honduras

Landscape has a long and distinguished history within the discipline of geography, but by its own admission is but one mode of ordering the facts of the geographical world. The origins of landscape within geography are traditionally traced to the nineteenth century German ideal ofLandschajt, with a dual meaning of(1) an area of land and (2) the viewpoint ofthis area ofland tied to the perspective ofan individual from a particular location (Olwig 1996). A dualism exists in the definition in that the landscape is both the material reality of a physical area of land and the ideal representation perceived from a particular viewpoint. However, it is acknowledged that landscapes can be viewed from multiple perspectives, each giving a differing interpretation (Meinig 1979). Parallax, the apparent change in appearance of an object when viewed from different positions, is conventionally associated with the discipline ofastronomy and, within geography, in the practice of photogrammetry. However, the definition fits nicely with the tradition oflandscape geography where perspective is of the utmost importance. Hence, is it possible to create a complementary parallax ofperspectives to address the human-nature dichotomy imbedded in the creation and global diffusion of that staple of tourism, the national park? Here this question is addressed by situating Celaque National Park, Honduras, within differing perspectives of the landscape tradition. It is argued that the ideological separation ofhumans and nature that occurs within the American national park tradition must be addressed if the negative cultural and natural repercussions of this exclusionary model of national parks are to be resolved.