Post 1: View from Larson

I currently live on the twelfth (very top) floor of Larson and decided to make my first blog about the view of the St. Olaf campus/landscape that I experience every day from my window (faces northwest towards Hoyme/Ytterboe and the wind turbine). After our discussions in class, I assumed that this entry would be primarily focused on the magisterial gaze that this view creates. However, when I woke up this morning at the ungodly hour of 7:00 am, and watched the campus begin to light up from the rising sun, I found my gaze to be far from magisterial.
In our lectures, we talk about how the magisterial gaze is a view the audience experiences when looking down onto the landscape and hovering above the portrayed scene (higher vantage point) . From here, the audience becomes the "magistrate,"  and possesses a more godlike perspective.
Looking down at the lifeless campus, I honestly was struck with more of the emotions I associate with the reverential gaze than magisterial. While many of the trees on campus have lost most of their leaves, they still appeared to light up with the sunrise and create long scrawling shadows on the earth below. Also, the concrete walkways, which have become excessive in many students' eyes, looked more like a serious of designs across the campus grounds than ugly slabs of concrete. It is very likely that the sunrise significantly influenced how I viewed the different elements of landscape from this perspective of campus; however, I nonetheless was inspired with more awe than I would have thought from such tall heights. I didn't feel empowered or like I was a godly figure that held dominion over the land below. I felt grateful, or rather, lucky, to behold such a beautiful view of campus.
I was not only "humbled" by nature, but the combination of the natural and human-made landscapes on campus and the way in which they became interwoven and connected from my lofted viewpoint.