“Aldo Leopold said that our ability to perceive the quality of nature begins ‘as in art, with the pretty’ After that it expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. What he was getting at is this: knowledge deepens appreciation. Seeing cranes feeding in a wetland he saw not only ‘clangorous descending spirals’ but the history of cranes and all of their evolutionary predecessors who had spiralled down upon the wetland over aeons.”
Cal Flynn, Islands of Abandonment.
Abandoned Desert Buildings On Creepy Lunar Landscapes
This too is a form of beauty – a conceptual one. As a mathematician might appreciate an elegant equation or an artist might consider an empty room lit only by a flickering light to be beautiful. As with other forms of aestheticism it can be taught. To come to an abandoned mine, a spoil heap or a quarry or a carpark and see it for the natural wonderland it has become is, I admit it, a difficult ask. But in these environmentally straitened days, it is a taste worth cultivating. ~
Cal Flynn, Islands of Abandonment.
Extracted from: Islands of Abandonment
“What happens when humans foresake and ruin landscapes? They are never truly abandoned. Instead they are engulfed by the non-human world and they become teeming with many other foresaken wild lifeforms. The weeds, plants, insects, birds and large mammals move in and populate these places. Pushed to the brink of extinction elsewhere by the ever-expanding need for human progress – these ugly, abandoned fringes of our world are the places where these animals can finally breathe a sigh of relief.” ~ Cal Flynn
Islands of Abandonment is a book-length poem and an ode to the places humans have used, abused and then rejected due to pollution, war, or physical danger.
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