Now regarded as a pioneering classic of psychogeography, but written before such a thing was fashionable, The Unofficial Countryside remains a luminous and visionary work.
It was revolutionary at the time of first publication for the way it refused to accept the standard definitions of “urban” and “rural”. Mabey found and observed nature in the marginal spaces defying categorisation between the two. This wonderful book celebrates the wildlife that others overlook or condemn, and expands at length on the notion that “a weed is just a flower in the wrong place”. His outlook is liberating. There’s a sort of poetry about his observations that – as Iain Sinclair notes in his introduction to this beautiful edition created by Little Toller Books – isn't far from J.G. Ballard’s ability to see possibilities in ugly and abandoned spaces: “...a sliver of land left over between two strictly rectangular factories, a disused car dump, the surrounds of an electricity substation. Nothing can be done with these patches. They are too small or misshapen to build on, too expensive to landscape.” Ignored, they therefore “form some of the richest and most unpredictable habitats for wildlife to be found in urban areas”.
The book is a reassuring reminder of how resourceful life can be – what he calls nature’s “perennial opportunism and exuberance” – with birds and other small creatures often finding ingenious means to sustain their threatened communities.
There are musings on the life-giving properties of abandoned gravel pits and the English canal system. Plus, there are brilliant passages on the ingenuity of urban pigeons and the demonisation of foxes: “Our attitudes towards urban wildlife, our readiness to tolerate pests, is conditioned more than anything else by whether the creature in question will eat, both literally and metaphorically, out of our hands. No doubt foxes would be regarded as acceptable if they came sweetly, by day, to lap milk from doorstep saucers. Being lone wolves, midnight ramblers, prowlers and looters, they are branded as outlaws. It is homo sapien’s old chauvinism again: we are the stewards; animals should live by our rules, not those of the jungle. It’s not one of our most consistent attitudes.”
Mabey despairs at the sorry state of our parks, but marvels at the urban/rural idyll that is Hampstead Heath. It’s delightful to read of how he looked for a rare orchid on a golf course: “I quartered the slope carefully, eyes close to my feet, and going down on hands and knees in the more promising patches...I didn’t notice whether in fact it was the ninth and final green where I struck lucky, but my patience was running out and it was certainly the last one I was going to play. But there, nestling under a foot-tall birch shrub, I spied a couple of skulking frogs. I crawled about the area, expecting a horrified ‘fore’ to ring in my ears at any second, and found a couple of dozen plants growing in an area not more than two yards square.”
I particularly admire the way the book is organised, moving fluidly between topics without you really noticing. It’s a more satisfying approach than if it had been rigidly structured into sections.
The author largely avoids the topic of insects: “I think we may be lucky that insects are too small and remote ever to have entered our understanding in the way that birds and flowers have. If we saw their lives for what they really are I think it might be too much for us to bear.” He also writes surprisingly little about the vast volume and ubiquity of litter spoiling wild land everywhere, but then this is a problem that has grown since the book’s original publication. There was far less plastic debris in our midst in 1973 than there is today.
Whether he’s looking for wading birds at sewage farms or admiring the natural riches at landfill sites, the book is a joy to read because of his gentle wit and empathy for all living things. It’s a real pleasure to see the world through his eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment