Visual Pollution – Thoughts in a Parking Lot
Visual Pollution – Thoughts in a Parking Lot
Ever wonder, like I do, how did it come about that creature comfort of having electricity and cable in each home took priority over what our surroundings look like? And now that we have allowed this to happen with complete disregard, perhaps total complacency, can we ever fix it? I am sick of seeing utility poles dominate the landscape. If they ever come alive and are unfriendly, we are in trouble.
Nature watches and shakes her head.
Seagulls on top of parking-lot lights shriek and cry in their distinct voices,
as I wheel my cart of groceries to my car.
Pigeons lined up on the roof of the large food-market-chain building.
A railroad nearby the parking lot.
Large hills in the distance looking like small mountains against the sky of blue scattered white
and trees between me and the hills and the sky. When I look through the trees, bare of leaves, I can see the hills and the sky.
And if I look to the other side of the lot I see Street, main thoroughfare, and utility pole upon pole upon pole upon pole, with lines of wires, many lines of wires strung, strung pole to pole with occasional sections filled with birds congregated together on a portion of line or on the top one of the poles stretched out in either direction from the top of the pole.
What a contrast.
If I look in one direction I see nature. I try to look in the other direction I see visual pollution of all sorts, but the utility poles and the wires are the worst.
This is a unique location in that I have the possibility of looking towards nature as opposed to being engulfed or accosted by the pollution.
In most instances we don’t have this nature option these days, and it is all visual pollution.
Which explains why so many of us need to get out into the country from time to time because our visual senses are so bombarded with noise, visual noise, that it makes us churn inside and we are so accustomed to it that after a while we don’t even realize it.
Look in one direction and I feel anxiety arising, look in the other direction and I feel a settling into my breathing and a stillness that quiets me.
Why have we allowed so much visual noise? I can also see the high-tension metal electric poles and wires, cables strung from pole to pole, and those actually are in my view as I look towards the trees and the mountains, so even in that direction I feel infringed upon and my view is not pure.
Why have we allowed so much visual noise? I don’t even think our municipalities take it into consideration any longer, if they ever did. Just based on visual noise alone, is it any wonder our society is highly stressed? If I really look around at my environment it is full of visual pollution, quite ugly compared to an unobstructed view of hills and trees and sky.
Again I ask, how did it come about that creature comfort of having electricity and cable in each home and the need for enormous amounts of energy for all the businesses we patronize, took priority over what our surroundings look like? And now that we have allowed this to happen with complete disregard, perhaps total complacency, can we ever fix it?
nmitchk@aol.com