‘Don’t be a slave to modern urban living. Stop and look around - you won’t be disappointed’

‘LOOK AROUND’: Lee Harrison is a writer of offbeat fiction and a writer-in-residence in Hull with the national writing charity First Story

With the region - and the world - waking up to the global threat of climate change, guest columnist Lee Harrison provides his thoughts on why we should appreciate what is all around us

I was lucky to have parents who passed on and encouraged a love of the outdoors, and introduced me to the Yorkshire coastline.

I remember exploring the rock pools at Flamborough, watching gannets diving off the cliffs at Bempton, sandpipers scurrying after the tide on Hornsea beach, and marsh harriers and terns on the mere.

And still closer to home  - though not everyone appreciates it – we have true wealth in and around Hull.

The Humber estuary hosts some of the richest (and most endangered) coastal landscapes which host a deep diversity of life.

Donna Nook is one of the largest breeding grounds in the UK for the Grey seal, which internationally is one of the rarest seal species.

Spurn, at the end of the Humber is a unique, internationally important environment rich in both indigenous and migrating birdlife.

The length of the Humber itself is a rich and complex home to a variety of fragile mudflats, sandflats and saltmarshes, supporting still more diverse marine, mammal and bird life, enough so that the estuary is listed as a Special Area of Conservation. 

There is a sense of love and awe that I’ve (sometimes forcibly) encourage my own children to appreciate; because there’s something wonderful about seeing an alternative, sometimes quite alien life form, and yet being able to relate to its struggles.

All of us are just trying to get by, after all.

I genuinely believe that there is a real value in appreciation of the natural world. It is educational. It is humbling.

It is reassuring to know that life is out there. It takes us out of our own backsides and gives a wider perspective on life in an age when we are scandalously self-absorbed.

We get locked in to modern urban living. We look at screens that organise our day and seek to direct our interests via marketing algorithms.

We proceed along designated traffic-managing infrastructures. We follow signs, ride lifts and escalators, follow arrows around one-way systems.

Less frequently do we actually look around us, into the nooks and crannies in-between our designated modern lifescapes.

In just going from A to Z, we don’t explore. We don’t discover. And that limits us; is bad for our wellbeing and mental health. 

So look around. See life.

You don’t even have to venture to any of the places I mention above. Nature exists all around us. It invades, delightfully.

I have fond memories of watching the songbirds in my nana’s back garden on North Road, ready with my RSPB pocket spotters guide.

Life spreads all over your tenfoot and across your allotment.

The Chanterlands Avenue Cemetery, (already a location of historical interest), is my current favourite. The unlikely birdsong, there amongst the dead, is incredibly uplifting on the trudge into work.

If you work in the old town, take a quick walk along the River Hull, where you can see redshanks and curlews wading along the muddy banks, cormorants diving for fish, and maybe a seal off the pier if you’re lucky.

Recently (though this may actually be an unfortunate reminder of climate change) I was astonished to spot a kingfisher flying into Princes Quay.

So, look around you. Love the outside. Benefit from it. Walk.

Treat your route not as a thoroughfare, but an environment in itself. Animals and birds and plants are the content that makes the world sing.

Enjoy open spaces wherever they are squeezed in. Even just walking across the school field after the drop off gives a brief dose of wellbeing.

See nature. Recognise it. I promise, it’ll do you good.

The climate crisis has escalated to the point where it is now essential that we act.

It is a unique challenge – and responsibility - faced by the region, as posed by projects such as Lagoon Hull.

Obviously, the fear of flooding and damage to the city’s infrastructure is the driving force behind all this – but I’d like to call on a sense of compassion to drive our attempts at a greener, more sustainable future.

The climate and environment we seek to protect isn’t just a resource for us – isn’t just about jobs and economy.

If we can put a face on the natural world by simply noticing and loving it more, it can surely only help?

Paving the way to a greener world should not just be an oppressive task, not just an industrial or logistical feat but us protecting and enabling something we actually love - and that ought to do our souls good.

Grandad Attenborough has been telling us this for decades. We haven’t listened. His forty or so year career marks a devastating period of change, taking him from the role of posh explorer in khakis, taking infectious joy in the animals he filmed, to a leading spokesman in a time of impending global disaster.

I remember the Sunday night Wildlife-on-One slot, and the sinking feeling of that obligatory last five minutes, where we had to hear about how all the beautiful creatures we’ve just enjoyed are in mortal danger from us. But that 10-minute afterword is not the afterword any more. It’s the main story.

I remember asking my dad – is that our fault? And now my kids sit through Seven Worlds or Planet Earth, through melting ice caps and rising tides, stripped forest and burnt plains, and ask me the same question - is that our fault? And the daunting answer, more than ever, still is – yes.

And more than that, for them, and for all future generations, it has to be more than just fault, but active and caring responsibility.