As Coronavirus took over our lives, we saw thousands of people flock to the countryside, risking an even more alarming spread of the virus. I am not here to comment on the rights or wrongs of these people’s activities, merely to reflect on the eternal allure of rural places in a time of crisis.
A week into lockdown and our daily ration of exercise continues to see people searching for natural spaces to take refuge from the prevailing fears and uncertainties. This highlights humanity’s need for nature, green spaces and, here in Britain, the cultural safety blanket that we call the countryside.
Simon Schama, in Landscape and Memory, talks about the primeval forests as sources of refuge. Moving through history we see the monarchy hiding in oak trees (Charles II) or fleeing to remote Hebridean islands (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and then wartime evacuees parachuted into rural communities across Britain.
Historically, the presence of natural resources combined with the remoteness from pursuers make rural places attractive hideaways. With Coronavirus, it’s not a game of hide and seek because the act of ‘hiding’ or seeking rural refuge can also be the act of transmission. The comparison today also fails because few of us in the modern world could survive on nature alone.
Nevertheless, the innate connection of humanity with nature endures. The benefits of cleaner air and opportunity for physical exercise may enhance the appeal of a rural escape – a ‘constitutional’ walk for example might be perceived to strengthen our ability to fight off illness. But, I argue that it is a less rational and a more instinctive or sub-conscious reaction that perpetuates through our culture.
To most people’s view, the coronavirus is not “natural” – it is a mutation and all the images that we see are straight from a science laboratory with none of the colours that we associate with nature. Even though its origin may be animal-related, it was “un-natural” assemblages of animals and humans in confined spaces that appear to be at the centre of the pandemic.
Now that we are in “lockdown”, access to open spaces and nature is further restricted. For many people, the wellbeing effects of being outdoors in green space is essential to their mental and physical health. In these cases, the knock-on impacts of lengthy periods of lockdown will surely be more detrimental in the long run.
Perhaps it’s selfish of me to want to continue to play pooh-sticks with my son on the quiet little bridge down the road and to bemoan the closure of our village playground. Perhaps I really only should venture beyond the front door to buy essential food and medication but it is very hard to reconcile the idea that our best strategy should be to segregate ourselves away from nature, at a time when we crave a return to a more ‘natural’ (or do we just mean normal?) state of affairs.
This brings to the fore the age-old sociological dualism of nature and society. Whether the urban refugee or the rural isolationist, recent events are making us think about our relationship with nature. When things are working, we crave the fast pace and cultural richness of modernity and urban living (even if we also like to combine this with a rural home and lifestyle for part of the time) but crises like coronavirus highlight the precarity of the globalised world that we have created. When it’s over, I wonder where nature and rural space will feature as we return to the lifestyles we’ve become accustomed to?