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ARTS  2 0 2 0V I S I ON EXTRACT We could talk of landscapes as ‘growing’ ideas, just as they grow plants The Geography of Hope In 1960, the novelist and historian Wallace Stegner wrote what would become known as the Wilderness Letter. It was addressed to an official involved in a federal policy review of America’s Outdoor Recreation Resources, and over the course of the letter Stegner argued that particular places and landscapes were worth more than could ever be revealed by a cost–benefit analysis of their economic value. No, Stegner explained – we need such places because they remind us of a world beyond the human and also because they allow us to see ourselves as part of the “environment of trees and rocks and soil ... part of the natural world and competent to belong in it”. Taken together, he concluded, such places constitute a “geography of hope”. The phrase is memorable; its sentiment is invaluable. There are, as Stegner knew, certain thoughts and feelings that can be had only in certain places: cognition is sitespecific as well as motion-sensitive. It has long seemed to me that we might imagine landscapes as holding specific ideas and experiences just as they hold certain stones, minerals or species; that we might even talk of landscapes as growing ideas as they grow plants. And that, by extension, when we lose certain places – when they are destroyed incidentally, or deliberately – we lose not only the life that they held but also the thoughts that they enabled. Yes, thought – like memory – inhabits external things as much as the inner regions of the human mind. Forests, moors, rivers, mountains, lakes, heathlands, sea cliffs, islands... but also parks, copses and Nature reserves: these 38 Resurgence & Ecologist November/December 2012
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(Top left) Autumn in the National Forest: Ross Hoddinott; (Left) Mountain Hare in Winter Coat: Mark Hamblin; (Above) Arctic Charr Males: Linda Pitkin © 2020VISION Some places remind us of a world beyond the human, writes Robert Macfarlane are places that can kindle new ways of being or thinking in people, can urge their imagination differently. It is valuable and disturbing to walk through a woodland containing oak trees that take 300 years to grow, 300 years to live, and 300 years to die. Such knowledge, considered seriously, changes the grain of the mind. Over the past two years, I have been involved with a mental health project called Gateway to Nature, designed to improve access to natural places for homeless and vulnerable people in the Midlands. The project is led by a deeply inspiring man called Graeme Green, who is convinced of the worth of contact with Nature – of the new kinds of feelings that it can provoke in profoundly troubled individuals, as well as in the more fortunate. Graeme’s group has planted an orchard on one community allotment, and has grown vegetables on another. Participants have been taught the basics of birdwatching, Nature photography and botany, and they have learnt to lay hedges, cook outdoors and read maps. They have gone for walks together along rivers, in country parks and through other nearby green spaces. The gains have been slow but unmistakable: they speak of new feelings of confidence, of balance, of calmness. Taken together, the places to which these people have been have come to constitute their geography of hope. Robert Macfarlane is a Nature and travel writer and an advocate for wild places. This essay is an excerpt from 2020Vision. Issue 275 Resurgence & Ecologist 39

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ARTS  2 0 2 0V I S I ON EXTRACT

We could talk of landscapes as ‘growing’ ideas, just as they grow plants

The Geography of Hope

In 1960, the novelist and historian Wallace Stegner wrote what would become known as the Wilderness Letter. It was addressed to an official involved in a federal policy review of America’s Outdoor Recreation Resources, and over the course of the letter Stegner argued that particular places and landscapes were worth more than could ever be revealed by a cost–benefit analysis of their economic value.

No, Stegner explained – we need such places because they remind us of a world beyond the human and also because they allow us to see ourselves as part of the “environment of trees and rocks and soil ... part of the natural world and competent to belong in it”. Taken together, he concluded, such places constitute a “geography of hope”.

The phrase is memorable; its sentiment is invaluable.

There are, as Stegner knew, certain thoughts and feelings that can be had only in certain places: cognition is sitespecific as well as motion-sensitive. It has long seemed to me that we might imagine landscapes as holding specific ideas and experiences just as they hold certain stones, minerals or species; that we might even talk of landscapes as growing ideas as they grow plants. And that, by extension, when we lose certain places – when they are destroyed incidentally, or deliberately – we lose not only the life that they held but also the thoughts that they enabled.

Yes, thought – like memory – inhabits external things as much as the inner regions of the human mind. Forests, moors, rivers, mountains, lakes, heathlands, sea cliffs, islands... but also parks, copses and Nature reserves: these

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Resurgence & Ecologist

November/December 2012

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