The Curse of the Ugly

Ugliness brings down everything to its own level. It's the blot on the landscape and the rotten apple in the barrel. And industrial scale ugliness is as bad as it gets. The trouble is that everything that's done nowadays gets done as an industrial project, the humanity, if there ever was any, is squeezed out of it, and the result is a tainted experience because efficiency is the driver rather than natural beauty. The removal of the scar of the power lines across Blacka Moor has been a revelation. With one action we have wiped away something that some of us had hardly realised was corrupting our vision. Industrialised landscapes are often characterised by sheer scale and may make us think of power stations, factories and oil refineries but one of the most industrialised landscapes is the grouse moor often a vast expanse of shackled and dehumanised space where top down discipline has been imposed by managers set on repressing and punishing most of the characteristics of free nature to serve their own economic ends.



Free land has varied and changing views and trees are the star performers, changing week by week throughout the year. This week it's been tree rime that's delivered natural beauty at a time of year when open landscapes can be depressing. Blacka's return to a more wooded character should be welcomed. Nobody should be cutting down and poisoning, bashing and coppicing. Celebrate nature fighting back.



Each one of the trees in the picture above has grown of its own accord. It was not planned and would certainly not have been allowed to grow under any regime like those managed by wildlife trusts today. Blacka today would be a much poorer place if conservation of their preferred kind had been practised here 50 years ago. The trees here show many different sides to their character as they change over a year. Today they are beautiful because of the rime from frost and fog. Later in the year as spring comes they will go through a succession of various shades of green. In the autumn the colouring will delight us in another way.

I remember that in my childhood farmland was often attractive in ways it rarely is today. The farming industry in its publicity welcomes the changes as a sign of progress and efficiency and when looked at like that you see they may have a point. But we've lost a lot in getting that efficiency. That's all the more reason for keeping large parts of our landscape separate from the compulsion to manage and control.