Tag Archives: walking in landscapes

Time to take a breath with national parks

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* A version of this post is also on brianfurze.com.au

There has been a lot written in the Australian press recently on national parks and the changes which are occurring in their management (see also various previous blogs of mine). It’s encouraging to see the number of stories critical of the potential undermining of the concept – not to mention the park’s protective functions, and their contributions to both sustainable local economies and sustainable landscapes.

An interesting article can be found on the ABC’s website (available here). The essence of the article can be summed up in the following:

No longer are national parks primarily there to preserve and protect our country’s precious natural heritage but now must be the venue for a vast array of potentially harmful activities.

This of course is the old ‘protection from and protection for what’ balance national parks have to deal with. Put another way, it’s the balance between conservation and biodiversity needs and economic development trajectories.This has been the case since the first national park was legislated (Yellowstone) for the protection of wild places from the onslaught of cities and civilisation.

That was over 150 years ago. There has been a lot of sophisticated thinking since then. At this stage in thinking, you’d hope we moved on from ‘either/or’. You’d hope that with a bit of creative thinking, we can actually move to something resembling ecological system needs being protected with a re-imagined vision for development trajectories.

Unfortunately, in Australia, judging by the number of changes occurring to what is being considered as ‘legitimate’ activities in national parks (for example, mining, forestry) and the various attempts to excise sections of parks, the ecological/landscape protection role is being undermined.

This raises some important questions to consider (at least in my mind):

  • Where is any sense of the kinds of economic contributions parks make to local areas through tourism? Parks are well-known to provide important economic contributions locally. We certainly don’t want to see local economic benefits undermined.  This is usually the first point of analysis but I don’t hear much about it at the moment from Australia’s agencies.
  • Where is any understanding that if you get sustainable tourism right, you will have sustainable jobs and  a sustainable economy (that is, the LoST approach)?To my mind, these changes are not only about the balance of ‘protection what/protection for’, but fit into broader conversations about sustainability, sustainable landscapes, sustainable economies and sustainable communities.  We can’t separate these. And there is enormous silence…
  • Where is the recognition that parks originally were conceived as places for re-creation (that is, re-connecting with the living and the non-human worlds), and not necessarily recreation (that is, for hunters, for 4WDers)? I’m not saying it’s ‘either/or’, just that we need to have some discussions about it, rather than something imposed by governments.  Actually, all I’m suggesting here is some dialogue and some transparency…

As someone who has worked in the national park/protected area management field around the world, it is particularly sad to see a wealthy country like Australia losing the balance, a balance which is essential in economic, ecological and social ways. It’s a balance that needs to be right for local, national and international sustainability.  And, perhaps most importantly, it’s not just about losing the balance, but the mindsets, ideas, ethics and values which cause the balance to tip.

Connecting to place: some LoST thoughts

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As I write this, I’m sitting on the terrace of my apartment in New Delhi.  The weak winter sun is leaving the terrace now, and there is a noticeable chill in the air (though not as noticeable as it was a few weeks ago – soon the heat will be back). I’ve been thinking for some reason about one of my favourite landscapes -  a place of, at least to my mind, extraordinary beauty, people very committed to their area and rich biological diversity sitting side-by-side farming landscapes.

I’m in reflective mode and its taken a little time for me to understand why specifically this should be the case.  I think it’s the parrots, sitting in the trees just across from my terrace. It’s not the specific species, just the fact that there are parrots in the trees. This favourite landscape of mine has lot’s of parrots – they’re one of my first memories of it, back when I was a kid travelling around with my father who would visit for his work. And now, after more than 40 years and countless visits of my own, it is very deeply etched into my memories, my work, my life and my sense of identity.

The landscape I’m thinking about is one where I’ve camped, cycled, walked, canoed, photographed, worked with communities in planning sustainable futures, and all kinds of things.  I’ve been their on my own, with friends, with students, with colleagues, with family.

These connections are multi-layered. They are partly framed by my values and ethics (and in turn the landscape actually frames them), partly by memories of sights, sounds, meetings, discussions, sunrises, moon-rises, chill in the air in autumn, cold in the air in winter,  heat in the air in summer and who knows what else.

For me, LoST is ultimately about these multiple connections to landscapes and their people.  These don’t have to be (and don’t need to be) developed over X years of visiting – they can be developed through a slow trip through a landscape. What is important is we are open to these connections, these multiple points of being part of a landscape.  It is a state of mind, an ethical framework, and a value-base and they come together in a landscape.

How often do we hear people implore travellers to ‘keep their mind open’ for experiences.  But for me, the important thing is how we actually interpret and reflect on these experiences, not just ‘experience’ them. Without this reflection, we just superficially experience – we grab yet some more experiences and they become part of our travelling life.  But they don’t have the depth of connection and interpretation that is only possible as we move towards our own approach and interpretation of local, slow travel.

In a tiny corner of the landscape…

So as I sit here on the terrace, a little chillier now, the parrots represent my ‘now’, but they also represent my connection to a landscape on the other side of the world. We don’t have to be in the landscape to remember it, we just need to be able to feel its connections with us. And when we feel this, that landscape has become an important part of us, and we have actively engaged with it, in our own way. And it’s a nice feeling.

On being at one with the landscape while walking

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I’ve been recently reading Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways: a journey on foot (Hamish Hamilton, London 2012). This is a really enjoyable book which explores, as it’s name suggests, the relationships between walking, trails (ways) and landscapes (and, indeed, seascapes as well). In doing this, Macfarlane looks at the ways landscapes have shaped us, continue to shape us as we walk within them, and, ultimately, how landscapes have shaped civilisations (and vice versa).

There are two quotes I’d like to share:

These are the consequences of the old ways, with which I feel easiest – walking an enabling sight and thought rather than encouraging retreat and escape; paths as offering not only means of traversing space, but also of feeling, being and knowing (pg 24).

Leading up to this, Macfarlane has been discussing the ways walking has been represented through historical movements  of people, their stories, journals and literature. For him, walking is not the negative pursuit of movement from one place to another, as many saw it, but a way of embracing a connection to landscape and, ultimately, to nature.  The ‘feeling, being and knowing’ is of both oneself and the landscape.

On the same page, Macfarlane writes:

…and I have read and reread the Scottish writer Nan Shepherd’s accounts of how she came to know the Cairngorm massif on foot, following its ridge lines and deer tracks for years until she found herself walking not ‘up’ but ‘into’ the mountains.

Walking. Through walking ‘knowing’. Through ‘knowing’ becoming an inseparable part of the landscape. As we should always be.

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