It can't be assumed that what one person finds beautiful will appeal to others. But some attractions are near universal. If you were looking for a scene that was irresistible to nearly everyone it might be wise to choose a view involving baby animals.
But what about the natural world more broadly and elements of landscape? When a farmer tells you he finds a field of beef cattle beautiful you might sceptically believe he's seeing what the rest of us might not see - including market value and a few pound in his pocket. Similar things could have been said of the Barley Barons and prairie-sized fields stretching uninterrupted to the horizon.
Tastes in natural and semi natural landscapes get more interesting. Many are awestruck by high mountain scenery enhanced by changing weather conditions and there are few of us who don't respond to the transformation of familiar scenes after a fall of snow.
If you're a heather-lover recent weeks on the local moors will have pleased you; more so than many years. Some hillsides that for most of the year are as dull as a corporation car park (lacking the interest of vehicle changeover) have put on their glad rags for this brief duration before returning to dreariness for another eleven months. It's possible some of the most ardent heather-lovers rarely visit outside August.
In saying this I don't want it to be thought that I dislike heather. On the contrary, the flowering is delightful. But what I do resent is an ignorant discourse that elevates heather into a cultish and exclusivist worship of its monopoly on the moors. It's just that the 'classic' heather moor is an artificial and purist concept which brooks no incursions from natural invaders. The similarity with political discourse is unavoidable. I'm reminded of the discussions on multiculturalism and political correctness that I normally find so yawn-inducing. We've all heard commentators with an agenda calling for more diversity and sniffing at those parts of our public life dominated by traditional male white anglo saxons. Well have these progressives ever considered the moors? These are more exclusive than public schools and only survive because of the artificial protectionism of 'Unnatural' England's rigid landscape character assessments that are designed to privilege the rich. Incomers, even those that used to occupy the land, are ruthlessly excluded. And where they try to destroy native birch woodland in order to reinstate artificial heather moors there are clear parallels with ethnic cleansing. Will anything less than a revolution change things?
But a revolution is what has been happening on Blacka, a slow benign one admittedly, and one that has worried the landowners who've tried to reverse it in the manner of most revolutions - just replacing one kind of tyranny for another.
And the landscape that has been emerging is, gloriously, not set in stone; one that's never still but gradually evolving. The heather on Blacka, when it's joined by bilberry, long grasses, groups of trees and areas of scrub and bracken can look delightful at this time of year and when wildlife come into the mix it's a vindication of letting nature go its own way. Why should one always be expecting to manage in a way that keeps a certain character in a stable state. Humanity is the villain: the idea that any human institution could anyway keep things sustainably stagnant is a joke; our restless interventionism must change things to our own ends or hold things back to our own profit. Celebrate those parts of Blacka where still, maybe for not much longer, the predominant determinants are what's in the ground, the air and the character and diversity of the wildlife. Those parts that clash are those where managers have tried to intervene, supposedly to stop the process in its tracks - because too much nature is getting in!
All that's a prelude to saying that there are some heavenly scenes to be enjoyed on the naturally restoring parts of Blacka at the moment. Deer at their most beautiful are wandering through some of this lush and colourful spread of delights while enchanting parties of small birds gossip to each other in the birches feeding themselves up in preparation for the second migration of the year for some and the first for others.
Magic and beauty are by definition not sustainable and quite definitely not stagnant. They are fleeting qualities, certain moments that may never repeat. They are what you get when you escape from office priorities and allow humanity to stand back from crass intervention.
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