The plan is (still) to take this tent out to some of the sites featured in the map but as with some much of our external and internal lives , the landscape - the land itself- and our relationship with it has been changed.
In recent months the sight of a bunch of tents took on a new significance, as people took the government at their word - and deed - and ventured out. Wild camping went overground. The wreckage of cheaper tents that are a feature of festival clear-up operations marked the sites of our lockdown breakdown break-outs from beach parties, family gatherings and Illegal raves, and family gatherings at illegal raves. The promise of the LMS was of an escorted, valeted entrance to Eden. Freedom without anxiety, access without responsibility. Watt's eye, under an arched eyebrow, framed their vision within his own; his work shows us the sublime under siege, or ignored altogether.
Now, the litter of tent fibre joins the blue plastic of gloves and the 3-ply fabric of masks as a contemporary mediator of our everyday exchanges. The physical and psychological strata of the Coranascene acquires another layer.
Guardian, Aug 14 2020...
.Nikki Williams of The Wildlife Trusts said the tension between unprecedented numbers of visitors and rare species in fragile habitats showed the importance of ensuring people had access to local nature and didn’t simply drive to beauty-spots.
“You go to a place labelled ‘countryside’. It’s a visitor experience, whereas it should be integrated into our lives,” she said. “We advocate for a nature recovery network. Then (visitors)don’t.. get in the car and drive to a place that has a line drawn around it and says ‘This is where the good stuff is.’”
The Wildlife Trusts are particularly concerned that the government’s new planning white paper divides the country into protected zones and areas of development and regeneration – exacerbating the idea that “nature” is an excursion to an overvisited, distant nature reserve.
Nick Bruce-White, the RSPB’s regional director of southern England, said: “This interest in the outdoors and green space is something we couldn’t have wished for six months ago. I hope we can build on it. There’s a small minority of people who are doing wantonly illegal things and a bigger cohort of new visitors who, without sounding too patronising, don’t understand the basics of how to use the countryside appropriately.”