'All Geographers do is colour in'....'Geographer's love Crayola'...'It's all about the colouring pencils'....
In a five part series, exclusively for Geography with Dan, Daniel discusses how colour should be treated seriously within the subject. Each week, he selects a colour that helps to shape the planet we live on today, and studies that colour from a distinctively geographical perspective.
This week, he focuses on all things Green and argues that this colour is instrumental for a subject such as Geography.
'And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!'
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!'
[William Blake
'Jerusalem' 1808]
It's fair to say that we've all done it; cruised along
England's multitudinous array of urban highways and country tracks, rested our
temple against the sunlit pane of the wind-up window, and gazed out to
England's 'green and pleasant land'. The landscapes of Britain make up a
patchwork quilt of utter diversity. Vista after vista, we as humans are
enchanted about this nation's rich variety of eye-appealing panoramas, but
seldom do we appreciate just how wonderfully simple they really are. I use
'simple' cautiously; of course, the tapestry of the English landscape is one
composed of a range of complex interactions and processes. Just viewing one of
Constable's works for half an hour will reveal the density of life occupying
our rural landscapes, but I would strongly argue here that there must be
something so clear-cut and frank in our countryside which makes us find it so
appealing from the start.
After all, just take note of how we fall in love with
things; entities, people, environments. To love a film, for instance, we have
to travel to our local cinema, queue for a ticket, endure a generation of
trailers and adverts before we can claim to fall in love with the actual film.
We take time out of our own lives to read, and it may take several chapters to
'get into' it, so to speak. Falling in love with people may take an hour or two
worth of coffee-fuelled, lively and engaging chat in the local café.
But when it comes to our rural landscape, our instantaneous
love seeps from our hearts; we cruise around a corner and are immediately
immersed with an entirely different set of surroundings which, for some reason,
we instantly stare at. ‘Love at first sight’, one may say, and arguably less awkward
than that 'first date'. (In addition, it’s free of charge and does not consume
time).
So what draws us? What aspect of the landscape is that
intangible force that revolves our head from our iPad to our car window? What
essence of 'England's pleasant pastures' stir the human imagination in such a
way that we are emphatically encapsulated within the blessed panorama? Perhaps,
the clue is in Blake's poem: quite possibly it is the greenness of our hills
and dales, the greenness of our moors and heaths, the greenness of our meadows
and pastures that sparks our passion with the landscape.
Anyone that owns a pack of crayons (a useful item for
geographers apparently) should ensure that the green crayon is forever
sharpened, as there is no doubt that this is a green planet. A blue hue is
evident from space and that is noteworthy, albeit misleading; our life,
particularly our flora, however, simply radiates greenness. Take a peek through
the catalogue of Google Images at Clipart illustrations of Earth, and then
agree with me that land is more often than not coloured in green. Naturally,
our bounty of satellite images may tell a different story, especially in an age
of hyper-globalisation and intense industrialisation, and in some ways, this
makes the fact that 'green' is used to portray terrestrial land all the more
interesting. By colouring our land in green, perhaps we are trying to cling on
to our heritage; an age prior to human occupation when a squirrel could venture
hundreds of miles without making contact with terra firma. Or quite possibly,
we are hopeful that in the future, Planet Earth will return once again to
inescapable foliage and impenetrable shrubbery. Either way, we as humans- a
species that deforests, builds, creatively destructs our landscape, a species
that gnaws away at greenness - continue to portray our terrestrial land as
monotonously green.
Our compassion and sympathy with nature may re-emerge in the
future as we embrace the 'garden city'.
That's not to say we close our high-street shops, stick a pair of
gardening gloves on, and unite in an afternoon of weeding and pruning, but that
we incorporate greenness into our urban environment. It was an idea championed
at the start of the 20th century, and indeed remains a method of urban planning
adopted across the world, from New York to São Paulo, from Adelaide to New Delhi.
However, it all started in the UK, in a town called Letchworth that finds
itself nested within the confines of Hertfordshire. Why do we still create them? Perhaps, there's something about the
colour green that softens the marks of our industrial project; something to
mask the brick and mortar; something that more profoundly makes us feel that
little bit less guilty when we are reminded about the pace of our urbanisation.
What the 'garden city' movement more interestingly
highlights is the nature of flux and impermanence in our world today. In less
than two centuries, our entire position on nature and its potential has changed
in Herculean fashion. Our Industrial Revolution was an era of senseless
violence to our rural landscape; a capitalism-fired destruction of all that was
green and pleasant in our land. In the aftermath, we now pause and consider our
wrongdoings; our uncharitable selfishness with regards to conservation and protection,
and in desperation we make space in our towns and cities to reincorporate
greenness. Our markets are not the only things growing in the 21st century, and
ironically in some cities, the plants are actually prospering more. Maybe we
should inject some chlorophyll into our stock exchange?
But of course, this has always been a world of impermanence.
I was laying in a meadow not so long ago, on the outskirts of my university
campus. It's a place that positively screams tranquillity, and yet I seemed to
be the only one here on this particular afternoon. There I found myself
examining the meadow's carpet . How elemental it is, but how simply wonderful
the clouds are in influencing the tints of green of the meadow. As cloud after
cloud passed under our Sun's beam, so that electric bright green seamlessly converts
to a darker, more earthy shade and back to its dazzling tint.
I closed my eyes and remembered another time when I found
contentment in lounging on the ground; Alaska in the fall of 2012. There I
would lay, surveying the magical twilit heavens, and the celestial dance of the
Aurora Borealis. A nocturnal spectacle; a display far greater than any staged
or theatrical production. And very green. I would argue, purely on my own experience,
that the best representation of greenness- apart from our illustrious
countryside- are the Northern Lights. But, once again, a tale of impermanence
and unpredictability, for the lights cannot be forecasted. Their ornate shapes
or their sumptuous dance cannot be foretold. It's one of life's greatest
pleasures; the knowledge that we as humans don't (and never will) control
everything.
How multifaceted 'greenness' is for our planet; how diverse
its meaning. For many, it symbolises nature and hope. For others, it symbolises
death and sickness- anyone who has experienced the tragedy of mouldy bread will
know what I mean here. It's a colour of freedom that performs a duty in our
everyday lives, whether it's the bottom bulb on a set of traffic lights, or the
'green card'. In some respects recently, green has lost its colour, as the word
has become caught up in an environmental and conservation appeals: "go
green", "think green", "live green" and so on.
For me, however, it's the impermanence and instability of
greenness on our planet that makes it such a substantial issue, and upon
consideration, maybe it's the fact that it’s becoming more difficult to find
that makes me fall more in love with it when I see it. They say ‘distance makes
the heart grow fonder’; indeed, as we are forever distanciated from our 'green
and pleasant land', maybe there's renewed hope that we will, at some point,
rekindle our love for all things green.
