They took all the trees
Put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ’em
As a kid growing up hearing this song I enjoyed it and loved the boppy fun beat that gets stuck in your head. I also loved the ‘quirky’ lyrics that described a world different to the one I live in in Australia. A world where the trees were all cut down, so much so that people had to pay ‘a $1.50 to see them” in museums. I remember having conversations with my sisters about a world that looked like this, we just couldn’t imagine.
This song was written and released by artist Joni Mitchell in 1970 has been performed by over 370 artists. The lyrics made me curious today in my reflection of my first day in Singapore visiting the Cloud Forest, Flower Dome and Super Trees as I felt I had gone from never recognising this could ever exist to feeling like I was apart of this today.
Gardens by the Bay
Visiting Singapore, we entered into one of the top ten attractions of the country, Gardens by the Bay which includes the Super Trees, Flower Dome, and Cloud Forest. These star attractions invite thousands of visitors from around the world to witness the differing environmental areas of the world represented.
Cloud Forest
The Cloud Forest is a dome emerging from the Singapore skyline that houses the world’s tallest indoor waterfall (35m) and is representative of plant life from tropical highlands all the way up to plant life over 2,000m sea level. The dome takes visitors on a journey around the ‘mountain’ to visit these different regions.
Flower Dome
The Flower Dome is also a journey for visitors and a smorgasbord of flowers, sights and smells relating to regions all over the world. The Mediterranean, South Africa, Chile, California and South West Australia are all represented in the 1.2 hectare glass dome which can house up to 1400 visitors at a time.
Super Trees
Super Trees are a major eye drawing attraction of the area, especially at night when they light up and a moving musical rhapsody connects generations through music and lighting. The man-made steel and concrete structures house over 162,000 plants (yes that’s right 162,000!) in vertical sustainable gardens.
Visiting another area of Singapore today in Central Catchment Nature Reserve, a ‘wilderness’ area of Singapore it dawned on me the polar opposites of the ‘nature’ we visited at Gardens by the Bay to today’s ‘wilderness’ in the natural park area of the Central Catchment Reserve.
This song dawned on me as we visited this ‘wilderness area’ and remembered our visit to the star attractions mentioned above. The literal glass dome is a ‘tree museum’ where visitors are charged more than ‘a $1.50 just to see them’. This concept I once thought impossible as a child, I was actually immersed in for the day yesterday.
The trees, the mountain, the flowers, the world’s biggest indoor waterfall. They were all fantastic and I loved being a part of it, but is it really nature? Is this really connecting people to the natural environment? Is this ‘circus-ing’ nature to a glass dome play pen? And how do people truly connect with nature in this? And because of their experiences with this?
Joni Mitchell in her lyrics goes on to explain “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” which I feel is true of Singapore and the green spaces it currently occupies. Today there are plans to build a railway connector system through the corner of the Central Catchment Reserve we visited today, with potential to damage the ‘wilderness’ green space here that seems untouched. There are lots of issues surrounding this, some we explored as a group of students and some others have already explored.
Whilst I enjoyed the Super Trees, Flower Dome and Cloud Forest, looking through the lens as the Outdoor Education leaders we are, this challenges my viewpoint on them and raises questions relating to visitors and their future interactions with nature. Does nature become a walk-in and walk-out experience? Segregated to museums and indoor mountains? I hope not. From the world I couldn’t imagine as a child, to enjoying partaking in the thing I couldn’t imagine existed, I post the question – what do you think will occur to people’s interactions with nature as a result of this? Is this something you have even thought about?
Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
Put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ’em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Hey farmer farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
(http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=208)
Wow! Kel I have found your post to be very thought provoking and powerful!!
Great post Kel. When I think about the human condition and challenges we have as a species undertaken, the conquest and taming of nature is a central and enduring theme of humanity – and we have long thought of this as progress. No doubt many of our ancestors needed to conquer nature, to control disease, to harness fire, find shelter from the storm (BoD Dylan?). But today,how far do we have to go? How far is too far? How far will result in an alienation from nature for the detriment of the human species? Have we already gone too far in the western world so than not only humans but nature itself is now fundamentally changed forever. Your post alludes to how Singapore has changed nature and changed people too. There were more people in the Gardens than there were in the central catchment I bet. To digress a little – i think nature docos do something similar. We have come to expect nature tooth and claw and up close and time lapse; showing us wonder, and air conditioned beauty and effortless vistas..and convenience of the nature experience. This is the cloud forest nature, friendly adn convenient but also beautiful. And we marvel at our human ingenuity and skills, but also, ironically perhaps, implied dominance and supremacy over nature itself. For me, the end result is that real nature is devalued as perhaps not spectacular enough, not fast or flashy or too boring. Sometimes this is a real challenge in teaching OE as we cant conjure up a Koala or a Echidna when the kids would like to see one. So, OE has used adventure based activity as a hook to be in nature – but unfortunately sometimes the hook, becomes the bait, and nature is again relegated to a ‘playground’. I could go on but better do some work!!! cheers
Wow! Kel I find you link to Singapore and today’s society very poignant
And powerful. It is certainly thought provoking.
I AM OLD SO WAS AROUND WHEN JONI SANG THIS THE FIRST TIME.Those trees are an amazing example of the song. Your blog is a very good response to your surroundings.
More like this Barbie?
https://youtu.be/ZgMEPk6fvpg
Yes. This is it.
Still a great read many, many months later Kel! Thanks for reminding me about these blogs the other day 🙂