Reflective Learning Journal #5

As Human Geographers, it is one of our academic duties to go on fieldtrips. A three day all expenses paid fieldtrip to London is pretty good. It really made up for the fact that a four-hour bus journey turned into eight. For the majority of the journey we were stuck in a stream of traffic as the storm poured rain down the windows of the bus. As we travelled – slowly – across this urbanised road, one image really struck me. Standing on a central raised point in the middle of a field were several grazing cows surrounded by a ring of glistening water. The soils were too saturated, from excessive surface runoff from the roads as well as from the storm conjuring up thoughts of the impact of the urbanisation of areas and the tarmacing of roads, for further infiltration, potentially causing severe crop damage to the adjacent cornfields. By the end of the road works, we realised the cause of our delay: two large trucks had collided, scattering debris all across the road...all that wasted milk.

Therefore, the first day largely consisted of travelling, although (after sleeping for at least half of it) it was interesting to just admire the surroundings and think about them in different ways. On our way through the outskirts of London I noticed that we drove past a Mercedes shop. Clearly, you can devise economic implications about the areas from this one shop, but as I looked around there was much more to it than just that. There seemed to be a clear-cut line between what could be defined as the ‘richer’ and the ‘poorer’ shops. The landscape along the main road to Hampstead was covered with a combination of high-rise buildings, both residential and corporation-based of modern style – square and uniform with glass walls and exterior elevator shafts, as well as smaller suburban housing and car parks.

Despite the congestion and the modern uniformity there were a few gems among the stones. In the distance, large church spires of old architectural design, towering above the smaller rows of houses, cast long shadows over the landscape. Small green parks occurred every now and then like a small oasis in a desert of common grains of sand but the plants were like manmade objects, unnaturally dispersed and maintained to suit a specific vision. Although the attempts may have been to make this place seem like a natural landscape, trying to reflect the perception of the ‘natural’ countryside, the parks seemed too artificial to me. Perhaps my opinion is biased. Being from the countryside, my vision of what is ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ may be clouded by my own perceptions of the differences between the countryside and the urbanised environment. When I think ‘about what ‘nature’ is I immediately think of where I come from, surrounded by mountains covered with forests and unkempt flora, vast oceans of fields and little else besides. Although I wonder now, is all of that really nature?

~ Jones' Journal