Landscape contains the physical: earth and trees, rivers and oceans and reveals the effect of water, wind, light and time. Landscape may be scarred by the movement of man, animal or machine and these traces hold the history of man and creature. John Brinkerhoff Jackson defines landscape as “a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces.” Intervention has changed the Sacramento Valley floodplains into wetlands. What happens when wetlands become housing developments? How does the wildlife respond to these introduced climactic changes? How do you measure what is gained and lost by each intervention in the landscape? Can commerce and trade operate in balance with the environment and produce without destruction? Today, the rice fields are calm and still, framed by the curving checks, as the water reflects the sky above. The seasonal filling and flooding will begin soon and create pools in a landscape marked by pumps, drains and checks for the husbandry of water. The rice will be harvested, the fields flooded and the birds will pass though in migration. In spring, seeds will be sown and the process will begin again. The dust and activity of the October harvest settles to a quiet pond marked by clumps of mud, stray straw and a slurry of feathers. Here, I have touched beauty, complications and subtleties.