Re-enchanting the crisis: reflections on rurality, futurity, and Covid-19 in the UK

Since the sudden, mass experience of spatial contraction through lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘nature’ has come to the symbolic fore in diverse and teeming ways. Amidst the anxiety, anger and the escalating inequalities, I have been struck – from within my particular context in the United Kingdom – by a discernible aesthetic shift in my social media feeds, where there is a new visibility of, and perhaps a re-enchantment by, the natural world. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are now fertile grounds for friends’ photos of wildflowers, spring blossoms, spinneys and streams, whether in country fields, home gardens or municipal parks. Other friends are sharing images of their first forays into home horticulture, surprised by their own joy at sprouting beans in windowsill pots. [Opening paragraph from introduction]