The local château park attempts - and sometimes succeeds - to mirror nature, to be an accurate reflection of reality. Located amidst a big and sprawling city, this is no particularly easy feat: The rumbling of trains, the honking of cars, or the occasional brutalist tower rising in the distance dispels the illusion of real nature rather swiftly. Yet for a sizeable park, artificially created and fundamentally altered at least once throughout its history, some vistas may just as well be described as real.
But what does that mean in this context, “to be real”? Even something artificial is part of this world, is something real. Yet this parks’ initially perceived naturalness feels wrong.
Maybe this weird sense of deceit originates from an uncanny valley of naturalness. An ostentatious park with large majestic statues, conveniently symmetric alleyways, spacious fountains and delicately arranged flowerbeds has no claim to model nature. The artificiality is on display, it is a defining feature. But turn your head away from all this pomposity and start walking along one of the smaller gravel paths. Soon, you will be surrounded not by statues, but by lush mixed forests, lazily winding paths, and gaggles of geese resting at the pond complaining loudly about your presence. What seemed artificial and maybe even pretentious turns into a sublime slice of nature.
Yet look closer. Observe, amidst the staggering beauty of sprawling trees and the overwhelming force of pure green mirrored in the ponds’ dark blue water surface, observe the convenience of every vista, every path, every rivulet. Everything is deliberately and delicately designed. And designed it has been well, so well in fact that I argue it to offer much-desired respite from the city’s starkness and unnaturalness.
This is what I call the uncanny valley of naturalness: this park is not natural, it never has been. Yet it is close enough to both veil the artificiality and evoke a droning sense of deceit despite, or rather because of, its’ beauty.
In any case though, expecting an untouched forest in the desert of this city is like asking a cat to bark. It’s unfair and stupid. Instead one should appreciate the beauty regardless of origin. And so should I.