This strikes me as one of those exercises that could generate a different answer on a different day. I suspect that my personal response to landscape is variable and multifaceted so that it is difficult to pin down just one answer, with so few words. Nevertheless there are two points that are currently of particular concern to me.
One is something that I have touched on a number of times in the past and that is the closing off of the countryside. Here I am very much moved by Fay Godwin’s work. This is a far from straightforward issue in so far as property rights have to be respected but my main concern is that too much of the country is closed off by such property rights that are not appropriate (that are themselves the result of “appropriation” in the past. The mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932 made a major difference but in England, unlike in Scotland, there is no “right to roam”.
Paradoxical as it might seem, one of my other current concerns is the over-use and commodification of parts of the landscape. People must have access but that access carries with it disadvantages: traffic, yet more car parks, litter, overcrowding, environmental degradation. Bits of, for example, the Pennine Way and Lake District hills have suffered badly from erosion cause by the tramping of so many boots. Bits of Hadrian’s Wall (in my back yard, so to speak) have been badly damaged by too much foot traffic and have had to be closed, even if only temporarily. Ben Nevis can feel like a busy high street in good weather as so many people disgorge from their busses and cars (particularly at times when the Three Peaks Challenge is in full swing). That is why I no longer go to these places (apart from the Wall if we have interested visitors staying) and prefer instead to frequent to quieter, the local, the otherwise unvisited, the hidden places so if nothing else I can try to avoid being a part of a wider problem.
This thinking is there as part of how I view the concept of landscape and its unavoidable connections with people. It is that relationship which is already affecting the landscape work that I do and is, I am sure, going to have a significant impact on what work I decide to explore in the future.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 