Hinterland
Walking the Hinterland
Between the land and the sea, lies the hinterland. A marshy and waterlogged liminal space where land eventually transitions into water. It is a place that is barren, uninhabitable to man, and deserted, yet evidence remains that link the hinterland to the presence of man delivered ashore by an unstoppable tide.
It is without human value or function, yet the boundless emptiness of the hinterland creates a sense of vastness that can make it feel significant to the individual visitor. With no distractions, this blank space provides opportunities for the imagination to run wild, creating room for freeing thoughts and introspection thinking. This is one of nature’s empty spaces that invites the visitor to fill in the gaps of their mind with their own spacial interpretation. The hinterland is a space to think.
Sunday 12th of March 2023
An early morning walk across the hinterland.
Isolated tufts of lively grasses dance in the in the breeze, exposed to the coastal winds heading inland but defying its will.
Spikey reeds, found in thickets, break up the line of the flat horizon creating a barrier to the wind and an inside world of shelter from natures elements.
Underfoot, areas of sticky wet sand are whipped into tiny peaks by the wind, creating minute mountain ranges on the floor, each perfectly formed yet entirely unique from its neighbours.
The softer dry grasses shift and sway at a different pace. Parted and flattened by the prevalent breeze and formed into a soft white carpet, depending on the direction of the breeze.
The hinterland is life's junk yard. Rusting oil drums, broken plastic buckets, and machined wood with edges rounded smooth by the sea. It is all found here but from where it has come from, no one knows. Human detritus, the remainder of man, the cast offs of a global society, delivered by the sea to one particular hinterland place. Found on the shore of the hinterland, these items of flotsam and jetsam, litter the grasses and marshes randomly and become caught within its reeds and dunes. Tomorrow they will be somewhere different again, delivered again by the tide to somewhere new. It is hard to establish if these items are flotsam or jetsam, but they are found in abundance within the hinterland. They are human items either surrendered to the sea or taken by her in anger.
Metaphoric of the human condition, this hinterland is space of mental cleansing, where thoughts and feelings of the individual can be left or discarded freely. Mental flotsam or jetsam is all around.
This hinterland is a space of human healing for those who allow it.
Hinterland
noun
1: a region lying inland from a coast
2 A: a region remote from urban areas
B: a region lying beyond major metropolitan or cultural centres
Flotsam
noun
1: floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo
broadly : floating debris
flotsam washed up by the tide
2 a : a floating population (as of emigrants or castaways) human flotsam
b : miscellaneous or unimportant material
a notebook filled with flotsam and jetsam
Jetsam
noun
1: the part of a ship, its equipment, or its cargo that is cast overboard to lighten the load in time of distress and that sinks or is washed ashore
