How I fell in love again with our beautiful land | Henry Porter

Danny Boyle's opening Olympic ceremony will rightly remind us of how glorious the country isI am rather looking forward to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. On the face of it, Danny Boyle's theme, Our Isles of Wonder, which "celebrates the exuberant creativity of the British", seems like a tourist board cliche that deserves a sneer from every culture studies prof and critic in the land.But the intent is obviously playful and, at the minimum, the ceremony will likely demonstrate that we don't take ourselves too seriously, if that wasn't already plain enough after the jubilee river pageant.But what is good about Boyle's idea is that it focuses on the British landscape and seeks to make a connection between the people and the land, which is worth doing at a time when most of us know little beyond towns and motorways, still less appreciate how much of the countryside remains unscathed by modernity.Having driven the length of Britain over the last fortnight, from London to Altnaharra in the far north of Scotland, stopping along the way in Lancashire, Westmoreland and the Cairngorms, I find myself overwhelmed by the beauty of what we still have on our doorstep. Even in the endless rain, it has a muted, subtle grandeur.In an interview for Martin Gayford's book on David Hockney, the artist expressed astonishment that the British seem not to notice when the hawthorn is in flower. In Japan, he said, there would be may pilgrims touring round the countryside in wonder. Hockney looked at the landscape around Bridlington, North Yorkshire, saw wonders that others were too sophisticated or blase to notice and produced one of the great landscape exhibitions of British art history.Of course, we have little idea what Isles of Wonder holds, but it seems to me that Boyle has come to the project with the same fresh-eyed lack of self-consciousness as David Hockney. It may not all work, but so what? This is, after all, only meant to be fun.Ten days ago, having parked on a minor road by heathland that overlooks the Trough of Bowland in Lancashire, I watched four snipe get up, climb into the clay grey sky and produce a territorial display of "drumming", a noise made in flight with their tail feathers, which occasionally has two notes. There are few sounds more evocative of the loneliness of the British moorland and, not for the first time this summer, I marvelled at the emptiness of the landscape.We think of Britain as unbearably crowded. There are 62.64 million of us and we are adding 7% to our population every decade. Our cities and transport networks seem to sprawl across the land in an uncontrolled bid to cover everything with roundabouts and supermarket car parks. Latest figures show that we are the third densest country in the European Union with 650 people per square mile (Belgium has 889 and the Netherlands 1,259).And yet there a far fewer people about than when I was growing up in the country in the 60s. You can walk all day and see no one. The country is as depopulated as Hockney's landscapes. It allows a writer such as Robert Macfarlane to describe in his book, The Wild Places, the true wilderness still just hanging on at the edges and summits of our islands.Another chronicler of modern Britain, Tom Fort, recalls walking in Wiltshire for his latest book (The A303: Highway to the Sun) and encountering not one living soul. He suggests this has something to do with modern arable farming, which is limited to five spurts of activity during the year. "Farmers plough, they fertilise, they sow, they treat for pests and they harvest," he says. "The rest of the time is spent behind a computer." This may be a slight simplification, but the fact remains that there aren't the people you used to find working on the land and that is unsurprising, given that 80% of us live in towns and cities and the agricultural workforce has declined by 11% since 1984.The latest figures from a survey called the National Ecosystem Assessment seem rather encouraging. Only 6.8% of Britain is classified as urban and in this there are large parts given over to parks and gardens. The NEA suggests that only 2% of Britain is in reality concreted over. And woodland and forests appear to be flourishing. They now cover 12.7% of the land, the highest proportion recorded for 88 years.So the notion that the green and pleasant land that Danny Boyle will conjure at the opening ceremony next Friday is somehow a nostalgic myth is incorrect. There are threats to the appearance of our countryside (wind farms, for example) and the habitats of small mammals, birds and insects (silage making and pesticides), but a lot of the landscape is well preserved, together with its magic.By the roadside on a very wet day in Sutherland last week, I found a party of six young Belgians photographing each other in front of the barren and misty slopes of Ben Klibreck. You could see the pleasure they took from the desolate landscape, as well you might if you came from a country with few hills to speak of and more neighbours than any of us would wish for.The 80% of us who live in urban centres, on the whole, have staggeringly little experience of the countryside or of country life and instead of seeing what filled the faces of the Belgian kids with artless joy, we take off for two weeks in the sun. This lack of connection with the countryside may have something to do with the fact nearly 10% of modern Britons were born outside the United Kingdom and have little knowledge of it.But I am disinclined to believe that since I spent some time last week in Sutherland with a fishing guide from an Asian family in Lancashire, who knows as much as any native about the ospreys and the pink pyramid orchids on the river bank.The truth is that the myth that has taken hold in urban Britain is one of rural despoliation, which is wrong. As well as evoking our inventiveness, humour, language and love of liberty (I do hope that someone is seen carrying the Magna Carta in the ceremony), Danny Boyle's show could do worse than re-enchant us with our own remarkable land and see it with the wonder of David Hockney or Robert Macfarlane.Olympic Games 2012Danny BoyleUnited KingdomPopulationHenry Porterguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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