Bret Marfut Lane's approaches reading

Lane, in his book “Landscapes of the Sacred,” provides three perspectives to understanding sacred place. The three approaches are the ontological, the cultural, and the phenomenological approaches. The first of these, the ontological approach, focuses on sacred place as having it’s own inherent, chthonic power. From the ontological perspective, what makes a place sacred is the characteristics of the place itself. This approach says that certain places have their own power that gives people sacred experiences. The second perspective presented by Lane is the cultural approach. This approach is the opposite of the ontological approach in terms of the source of the sacred power. From this perspective, sacred place is a cultural construction: any power that a specific place has comes form the conflicting ideas related to the place, and the passions that it invokes in people. Based on the cultural perspective, sacred place has not inherent power, and places in and of themselves are not sacred. The last approach proposed by Lane is the phenomenological approach. This perspective on sacred place suggests a balance between the first two approaches. In terms of this approach, the sacred nature of certain places comes both from the place itself and the way that people interact with it. I would be inclined to agree with this theory. At certain locations while hiking, I have been awed by certain aspects of the wilderness, without any encouragement from culture. However, I believe that culture can also give a place a sacred connotation. Many of the memories that I have of hiking certain trails in the mountains around where I live give those trails sacred meanings to me, meanings that would not exist if I had not spent time on them. I think that the ontological, cultural, and phenomenological approaches suggested by Lane are effective in quantifying the source of nature’s sacred power.