LANDMARKS
Robert Macfarlane
Hamish Hamilton, 2015
‘Landmarks’ is, in the words of its publisher, ‘a joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two’. It explores the power of language to shape our sense of place, arguing that words do not just describe landscape. They help us to pay attention, to become more aware, to care.
The book has two dimensions. The first is what Macfarlane calls a ‘word-hoard’, a repository of locally-based landscape description, the type of language which has arisen not from global culture but from the close observation of a particular place, its weathers and its wild creatures. Through a series of nine habitat-based glossaries interleaved between the book’s main chapters we learn of the ‘smeuse’ (Sussex dialect for the hole in the base of a hedgerow made by the repeated passage of a small animal), ‘smither’ (an East Anglian term for a light rain) and ‘rionnach maoim’ (a Hebridean Gaelic word for the shadows cast by cumulus cloud on moorland on a sunny, windy day).
Keeping such language alive is a vital task, Macfarlane argues. As these words pass away, so does our knowledge of their subjects and so too do the connections which they record and celebrate. Local residents opposing a recent application to build a wind farm on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides had to fight against the developer’s portrayal of their home as ‘a vast, dead place’. They did so by invoking its natural, cultural and spiritual importance through words - through song, poem and story - a ‘counter-desecration phrasebook’ in the words of one island resident.
The book’s other dimension, and the subject of its ten chapters, is ‘ecocriticism’, a literary journey into the genre of nature writing. Sometimes called the ‘literature of place’, this is a literary and aesthetic rather than a purely scientific or documentary endeavour, exploring the power of thoughtful, well crafted language to connect us with landscape. Its authors find their subject in attentive, respectful observation of the natural world and their voice in the relationship which develops as a result. As well as being a collector of words and a writer (see, for example, his ‘Mountains of the Mind’ and ‘The Wild Places’), Macfarlane is also an academic, and in this study of the works of some of the finest nature writers he is sure-footed - firmly on home ground.
Mirroring the book’s word glossaries, each of its chapters is built around a specific habitat. Unsurprisingly, the author’s choice of mountain book is Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’, a short but affecting homage to her beloved Cairngorms written during the latter part of the Second World War. Recently ‘rediscovered’ (and the subject of an author-presented TV programme), Macfarlane sums up its qualities as ‘precision as a form of lyricism, attention as devotion’.
The chapter ‘The Woods and the Water’ comprises an eloquent celebration of the life of his close friend and Suffolk resident Roger Deakin and, in particular, his trilogy of ‘adventure in nature’ books - ‘Waterlog’, ‘Wildwood’, and ‘Notes from Walnut Tree Farm’. As Deakin’s literary executor, no-one is better placed to put on record this unique and irreverent contribution to the genre.
The East Anglian theme is continued in the essay on the work of J. A. Baker, characterised here as ‘a good writer but a bad birdwatcher’. Baker’s ornithological shortcomings are, however, more than compensated for by the tight, vivid, constantly surprising language of ‘The Peregrine’ and ‘The Hill of Summer’. The former work is recognised here for its ‘compressive intensity, a generic disobedience, a flaring prose-poetry’. Here too, Macfarlane has been personally involved, helping to uncover the somewhat obscure story of the Automobile Association’s most famous employee and his growing obsession with Essex’s winged hunters. Baker was, he concludes, ‘a private and pained man, in flight himself, who discovered a dignity and purpose in the work of watching’.
Macfarlane’s literary studies also extend across the Atlantic to a well established and deep-rooted American nature writing tradition. In his ‘North-minded’ chapter I was entranced by his appreciation of the work of Barry Lopez and felt a sudden chill of recognition at the author’s admission that his first encounter with ‘Arctic Dreams’ ‘changed the course of my life’. The disciplined attention, the spareness of language and the uncompromising morality of ‘Arctic Dreams’ are understood perfectly here: ‘[Lopez’s] prose - priestly, intense, grace-noted - is driven by the belief that ‘it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well’, and by a conviction that the real achievement of place-writing might be to help incorporate nature into the moral realm of human community’.
Hamish Hamilton, 2015
‘Landmarks’ is, in the words of its publisher, ‘a joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two’. It explores the power of language to shape our sense of place, arguing that words do not just describe landscape. They help us to pay attention, to become more aware, to care.
The book has two dimensions. The first is what Macfarlane calls a ‘word-hoard’, a repository of locally-based landscape description, the type of language which has arisen not from global culture but from the close observation of a particular place, its weathers and its wild creatures. Through a series of nine habitat-based glossaries interleaved between the book’s main chapters we learn of the ‘smeuse’ (Sussex dialect for the hole in the base of a hedgerow made by the repeated passage of a small animal), ‘smither’ (an East Anglian term for a light rain) and ‘rionnach maoim’ (a Hebridean Gaelic word for the shadows cast by cumulus cloud on moorland on a sunny, windy day).
Keeping such language alive is a vital task, Macfarlane argues. As these words pass away, so does our knowledge of their subjects and so too do the connections which they record and celebrate. Local residents opposing a recent application to build a wind farm on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides had to fight against the developer’s portrayal of their home as ‘a vast, dead place’. They did so by invoking its natural, cultural and spiritual importance through words - through song, poem and story - a ‘counter-desecration phrasebook’ in the words of one island resident.
The book’s other dimension, and the subject of its ten chapters, is ‘ecocriticism’, a literary journey into the genre of nature writing. Sometimes called the ‘literature of place’, this is a literary and aesthetic rather than a purely scientific or documentary endeavour, exploring the power of thoughtful, well crafted language to connect us with landscape. Its authors find their subject in attentive, respectful observation of the natural world and their voice in the relationship which develops as a result. As well as being a collector of words and a writer (see, for example, his ‘Mountains of the Mind’ and ‘The Wild Places’), Macfarlane is also an academic, and in this study of the works of some of the finest nature writers he is sure-footed - firmly on home ground.
Mirroring the book’s word glossaries, each of its chapters is built around a specific habitat. Unsurprisingly, the author’s choice of mountain book is Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’, a short but affecting homage to her beloved Cairngorms written during the latter part of the Second World War. Recently ‘rediscovered’ (and the subject of an author-presented TV programme), Macfarlane sums up its qualities as ‘precision as a form of lyricism, attention as devotion’.
The chapter ‘The Woods and the Water’ comprises an eloquent celebration of the life of his close friend and Suffolk resident Roger Deakin and, in particular, his trilogy of ‘adventure in nature’ books - ‘Waterlog’, ‘Wildwood’, and ‘Notes from Walnut Tree Farm’. As Deakin’s literary executor, no-one is better placed to put on record this unique and irreverent contribution to the genre.
The East Anglian theme is continued in the essay on the work of J. A. Baker, characterised here as ‘a good writer but a bad birdwatcher’. Baker’s ornithological shortcomings are, however, more than compensated for by the tight, vivid, constantly surprising language of ‘The Peregrine’ and ‘The Hill of Summer’. The former work is recognised here for its ‘compressive intensity, a generic disobedience, a flaring prose-poetry’. Here too, Macfarlane has been personally involved, helping to uncover the somewhat obscure story of the Automobile Association’s most famous employee and his growing obsession with Essex’s winged hunters. Baker was, he concludes, ‘a private and pained man, in flight himself, who discovered a dignity and purpose in the work of watching’.
Macfarlane’s literary studies also extend across the Atlantic to a well established and deep-rooted American nature writing tradition. In his ‘North-minded’ chapter I was entranced by his appreciation of the work of Barry Lopez and felt a sudden chill of recognition at the author’s admission that his first encounter with ‘Arctic Dreams’ ‘changed the course of my life’. The disciplined attention, the spareness of language and the uncompromising morality of ‘Arctic Dreams’ are understood perfectly here: ‘[Lopez’s] prose - priestly, intense, grace-noted - is driven by the belief that ‘it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well’, and by a conviction that the real achievement of place-writing might be to help incorporate nature into the moral realm of human community’.
