When does something stop being rubbish and start being a feature of the landscape?
In the country some things never will because they don’t weather in a satisfactory way. Plastics and other synthetics usually don’t but wood and metal often do. Objects that belong there, at least in a human sense, like farm machinery, probably age into the landscape best. There can be a feeling of something at once jarring and somehow harmonious.
David Lynch said something about this from the other end of things in Catching the Big Fish:
When you see an aging building or a rusted bridge, you are seeing nature and man working together. If you paint over a building, there is no more magic to that building. But if it is allowed to age, then man has built it and nature has added into it — it’s so organic.
Read my piece on Lakeland tarns (sort of) here.
Paul Fishman 