And so my first 12 months of blogging on the landscape - of landscapism - reaches an end; a repository of thoughts given their head.
My aim has been to provide a forum to bring together, promote and discuss themes, subject matter and marginalia of all kinds on landscape: finding the connections across the landscape divides.
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To ask questions about landscape management, the false dichotomy of urban v rural, tensions betweensustainable transport, biodiversity and community food productionand the newNational Planning Policy Framework; to propose a Manifesto for a Working Landscape.
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To provide an evolving gazetteer to exploring landscape on the web; and suggest a biblio-resource for reading the landscape, ranging far and wide, fromWilliam Morris' News From Nowhere to Ross Raisin's God's Own Country; from Urban Wildscapes to Writing Britain: from Wasteland to Wonderland; from a wild utopian trilogyto a midwinter handlist to help survive the dark months.
To find wildness, places to be left alone with yourself; to seek out Robert Macfarlane's holloways, old ways and wild places, meander on paths and trackways, wander amongst ash: the shaggy signs of Pan and ramble on the urban fringe. To eulogize the watery lifeblood of the landscape where, men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.
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Toexplore landscapes of the past: a triptych of ruins, carved into the landscape, Avebury stone circle: 'an uncanny landscape', Dial Garreg: a story of stone and war propaganda films; to feel the history of a temporal space. As well as remembering more personal cognitive artifacts,a scrap of a memory: Arcadian dreaming.
To listen to songs which, like the grass, are evergreen; the sounds of PJ Harvey - Let England Shake, the Roman Roadsof Land Observations, Dennis Wilson'sRiver Song and the radical call to arms, The Land Song. To proclaim Here's a Health to the Barley Mow!
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To gaze upon the local topographies and vaster world's of Pieter Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow,David Hockney'sA Bigger Picture, maps of the Old Straight Tracks of Glastonbury and the beginnings of a rising Pandaemoniumstoking the Industrial Revolution.
To return to special places, the landscapes in particular ofKenilworth Castle, Bolton Abbey,Cold Ashton, Worth Valleyand Hergest Ridge. To turn off the gadgets andexperience the landscape where the path, winding like silver, trickles on; to ask, is there no end to this accursed forest? and enjoy being stumped.
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To find new discoveries and different perspectives; a sense of hope in the age of collapse, the alternative future vision of the Dark Mountain Project, the practice of walking as driftingand seek inspiration from a new Westcoasting life.
And to drift aroundthe margins: listening tosound mapping, musing on a comedy of landscapes, enjoying Jimi Bush and the palimpsest designed landscapes ofrural riding.
All the while, perhaps, seeking Jerusalem; a personal, progressive and magical 'land of dreams'.
My aim has been to provide a forum to bring together, promote and discuss themes, subject matter and marginalia of all kinds on landscape: finding the connections across the landscape divides.
To ask questions about landscape management, the false dichotomy of urban v rural, tensions betweensustainable transport, biodiversity and community food productionand the newNational Planning Policy Framework; to propose a Manifesto for a Working Landscape.
To provide an evolving gazetteer to exploring landscape on the web; and suggest a biblio-resource for reading the landscape, ranging far and wide, fromWilliam Morris' News From Nowhere to Ross Raisin's God's Own Country; from Urban Wildscapes to Writing Britain: from Wasteland to Wonderland; from a wild utopian trilogyto a midwinter handlist to help survive the dark months.
To find wildness, places to be left alone with yourself; to seek out Robert Macfarlane's holloways, old ways and wild places, meander on paths and trackways, wander amongst ash: the shaggy signs of Pan and ramble on the urban fringe. To eulogize the watery lifeblood of the landscape where, men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.
Toexplore landscapes of the past: a triptych of ruins, carved into the landscape, Avebury stone circle: 'an uncanny landscape', Dial Garreg: a story of stone and war propaganda films; to feel the history of a temporal space. As well as remembering more personal cognitive artifacts,a scrap of a memory: Arcadian dreaming.
To listen to songs which, like the grass, are evergreen; the sounds of PJ Harvey - Let England Shake, the Roman Roadsof Land Observations, Dennis Wilson'sRiver Song and the radical call to arms, The Land Song. To proclaim Here's a Health to the Barley Mow!
To return to special places, the landscapes in particular ofKenilworth Castle, Bolton Abbey,Cold Ashton, Worth Valleyand Hergest Ridge. To turn off the gadgets andexperience the landscape where the path, winding like silver, trickles on; to ask, is there no end to this accursed forest? and enjoy being stumped.
To find new discoveries and different perspectives; a sense of hope in the age of collapse, the alternative future vision of the Dark Mountain Project, the practice of walking as driftingand seek inspiration from a new Westcoasting life.
And to drift aroundthe margins: listening tosound mapping, musing on a comedy of landscapes, enjoying Jimi Bush and the palimpsest designed landscapes ofrural riding.
All the while, perhaps, seeking Jerusalem; a personal, progressive and magical 'land of dreams'.