It’s useful to think a bit more about this single page, from the “Color-in Book” that Ecology Action distributed in 1971. The image is meant to represent the world that an ecological mindset might help create, one in which there was the right balance between nature and man. Notably, the image does not have a single human in sight.
The sun rests in the zenith of the sky, smiling in a jovial manner and casting its rays of hope upon the water, animals, and plants. This image has a child’s simplicity to it, but it is also focused and deliberate. It offers a vision of utopia — a place that’s unblemished by the consequences of human destruction.
The user of the book is asked to color the image “PSYCHEDELICATE SWOOMAROON.” And the term ‘psychedelic’ fits: it would be mind-bending to be in the presence of such a place.
