Spoil Heap - Landscape after industry
E.O Wilson used the term ‘Biophilia’ to describe our human impulse to experience and imitate nature.
‘Sneyd Hill’ as it is known locally, is a spoil heap, a once martian-like mound formed from the aftermath of coal-mining - an industry I never knew. This unofficial nature now exists in the backdrop of routine, mostly unwritten and ignored, one that harbours true locality where the social landscape meets a scrabbling beauty of true inner-city wilderness.
For me, the heap is a locus to escape, a portal into a different world with an indifferent natural order intertwined with the quiet void of what was. I enjoy this beautiful loneliness, to ponder trees and listen to birdsong, returning throughout the seasons, where each time it is different, as am I.
Over the course of a few decades, this heap has become an independent nature with a miraculous ability to continuously renew itself, existing independent of any human agency. This is nature, local nature. A world with familiar adventure and despair - now a landscape of hope and crisis.
Photographs