Monday 9 October 2023
Gentrified Nature
We buzzed off on a short walk in the hills around Cromford today. A very pleasant day it was too, but one of the woodland paths had a new marker, a carved wooden pillar with the number 10 on it.
It was probably something like the markers dotted along the kind of walks found in leaflets displayed in visitor centres and cafés. They often show colour-coded walking routes such as blue, red and yellow designating walks of different distances.
As Mrs H once said of a recently visited wildlife wetland - it’s like gentrifying the natural world. It’s also akin to the walks laid out by landowning gentry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Easy paths with seats provided along the way so that guests could amble through the estate and admire the views.
Now we have colour-coding, information boards and leaflets with simple maps. There is nothing wrong with any of it, it is still very easy to get away from the gentrified areas, but it all becomes our world rather than the natural world as it would be if left alone.
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Having lived in deep countryside for a while, I was often surprised by how fragile particular areas and landscapes are. Heathland, in particular, requires a lot of management to prevent the "wrong" species taking over, and the South Downs would quickly become scrubby unless the turf wasn't grazed and "topped" by mowers. It's probably best to think of any open space in the UK as productive land, wasteland, or some kind of park.
But yes, keep the paths open and leave it at that. I guess a lot of the colour-coding ("40 minutes, with some rough patches and risk of tripping...") and signposting is due to fear of litigation.
"the natural world as it would be if left alone": but that doesn't exist in these islands and probably hasn't since the Neolithic. Judging by the pollen record the tree cover had largely disappeared by the end of the Bronze Age.
"Nature" in the British Isles is man-made. Probably almost everywhere else too. Maybe not central Greenland or Antarctica.
Spotted today: "Like so many Nazis, Colin Jordan (1923–2009) held some slightly extreme political views."
Sam - yes, silver birches seem to thrive in heathland and soon grow into woodland if not kept in check.
dearieme - yes that's a point. Near here, there was until a few years ago a wooded area which was supposedly heathland at one time. All the trees were chopped down and a particular breed of cattle allowed to graze it periodically in order to stop the trees growing back. The idea was that this would turn it back into heathland.
Yet the cattle disappeared some years ago and now it is well on the way to being woodland again with silver birch growing at a great rate - probably due to all the cattle poo. Yet it was probably woodland before it became heathland, depends how far back you look.
dearieme - I hardly know anything about him, but after a quick check I see he was punched by Denis Healey and also convicted of shoplifting three pairs of women's red knickers from Tesco. Even my short check suggests that "slightly extreme" is rather underplaying it. "Mad" would be closer.
Testing.
dearieme - no problem at this end.
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