We visited some of Karuna’s family in Canada over the summer. They live on an acreage a few miles out of town, in the middle of the prairie. It is flat even for someone living in Cambridgeshire. But I think the main thing that I notived is that the landscape is emptier. There are few hedges. The houses are spaced out. The stands of trees, small compared to English trees because of the freezing winters, are visible from miles away. As you walk along the gravel track, it feels like you are not making progress because the landscape changes so slowly.
This wide open landscape is combined with an absence of people. The neighbouring houses are several hundred yards away. And the neighbours may often be away (in town or going to a more remote cabin). The effect is that one can spend days not even seeing people (though you see trucks driving along the gravel road). I don’t think I have spent time in a place this empty. Even in rural England you usually have houses nearby, and people walking by.
One of the nice effects of this emptiness is a sort of slowness of life. There is not much to do, nothing in sight drawing you to action. That emptiness also allows a space from people different from a more crowded setting. An introvert in England is aware of people nearby even if choosing not to engage with them. If you feel lonely, you are lonely feeling left out of the human community around you. By contrast, in the wide open spaces of the prairie, you can be alone because there are not people around.
It is interesting that it is only going somewhere different (in this case the wide prairies) that makes something about my normal environment (awareness of nearby neighbours, crowded landscapes) noticeable. That is also true of culture. You only notice that you live in a specific culture, which influences you in many ways, when you move to live in another culture.
But going back to Canada and specfically life in the prairies, the space impacts human society in powerful ways. The wide open prairies mean land is cheap. It’s easy to buy a smallholding (acreage). Tiny towns have swimming pools better than large towns in England. A medium size church has a larger building than large churches in the UK, and that is not including the gym hall on site! Businesses own a plot of land with parking and a stand alone building, rather than sharing space, which probably enables innovation and start ups.
But it also means lasting community is harder to form. You have to be more deliberate to see people at all, let alone see them in a way that leads to lasting friendship. You can choose to withdraw from anyone or everyone. There is a general friendly politeness when interacting with people, but the space makes it easy to avoid deeper relationship. And with the space comes a reliance on cars. Even in towns, things are spaced out, and every shop has its parking lot. There is a transport (and so financial and environmental) cost to the wide open spaces and cheap land.
I was glad to visit Canada. But I really do love the English small town/ large village walkable environment. Growing up in it has shaped me, of course. But it also seems to me a very good human scale for community.
Jots and Scribbles 