Keely Johnson: Landscapes of the Sacred #2

Lane's discussion of recognizing an ordinary place as holy seemed a little far reaching to me. He says that the geographically breathtaking, are "ordinary" and are only sacred due to their stories and rituals. I feel like many of the places he mentions are storied for their geographic features. A lot of old stories of gods and mythical creatures were made to explain a geographic phenomena such as a river, or an interesting rock formation and a low lying river valley. How about the places that are too dangerous to travel? How do they still become a sacred place if you cannot go forth and perform the ritual needed to make it sacred? Also it seems to contradict the third axiom. How can the place always be sacred for every person who performs a "ritual"? Not everyone will experience the sacrality just be performing some ritual made by some random person that no one remembers anymore.