Escaping Indoors
by Chris Arthur
COVER FEATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | ESSAY
In a series of vignettes, essayist Chris Arthur considers why “respecting what
gives life is not a lesson to be learned indoors.”I
n E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View,
there’s a revealing moment when the
heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, is walk-
ing in the countryside with Cecil
Vyse, her unsuccessful suitor. In answer to
a question he puts to her, she admits that
whenever she thinks of him she always pic-
tures him indoors, in a drawing room with
no view.
Why begin an essay on climate change
with fictional characters from a comedy of
manners written a century ago? Improb-
able though it sounds, Cecil, Forster’s effete
creation, can be cast as environmental vil-
lain or fool. He represents the mind-set thatstands in the way of effectively addressing
the problems which confront us. In case
this sounds like evading responsibility by
passing the blame to someone else, let me
say at once that I can see aspects of Cecil’s
lethal indoorness in myself and in everyone
I know. We all need to change.
Like Cecil, millions of us have become
more defined by the time we spend indoors
than outside. As a result, we’ve lost touch
with the natural world. Those with the most
pronounced indoor sensibilities can’t iden-
tify even the commonest species of birds,
insects, and plants in their locality. They
don’t remember the last time they got thickmud on their shoes. Climbing a mountain
or walking by the sea are rare activities,
confined to vacations. They may never have
visited a farm or witnessed nightfall in a
forest; never picked fruit directly from a
tree and eaten it, or experienced being alone
in a landscape in which there’s no trace of
human habitation.B
WRITING ABOUT ETHICAL approaches
to land use, Peter Carruthers emphasizes
“the role of encounter in shaping think-
ing.” Philosophy and ethics are, he says,
“formed by real-life experiences.” If thosePHOTO: STUART LIME DIGITAL60 W LT SUMMER 2019