#robert macfarlane

[probablyasocialecologist]

The language of hydrological governance refers to rivers, streams and lakes as ‘waterbodies’. To the forty thousand recognized waterbodies in England, Wales and Scotland should be added another 65 million or so – for every human is, of course, a waterbody. Water flows in and through us. Running, we are rivers. Seated, we are pools. Our brains and hearts are ­three-­quarters water, our skin is ­two-­thirds water; even our bones are watery. We were swimmers before we were walkers, slow-turning like breath-divers in the dark flotation tank of the womb.

Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Words make worlds. In English, we 'it' rivers, trees, mountains, oceans, birds and animals: a mode of address that reduces them to the status of stuff, and distinguishes them from human persons...I prefer to speak of rivers who flow and forests who grow. In English, we speak of a river in the singular. But 'river' is one of the great group nouns, containing multitudes. In English, there is no verb 'to river'. But what could be more of a verb than a river?

Robert Macfarlane, Is A River Alive?

[ragnarokproofing]

When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. A conviviality of being leaps to mind and eye. The world becomes eerily various and vibrant again. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.

Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey

[trenchandwhite]

[devoutjunk]

A Candle Burning: Nation and the Agency of Nature in Fantasy

If you've been listening to me yap about my essay on nationalism, nature, and fantasy for months and would like to actually read it, it's now up unpaywalled on my Patreon, feat. work by Ursula K. Le Guin, Susanna Clarke, Hope Mirrlees, and T.H. White, with (of course) some brief digressions into nonfiction by Robert Macfarlane and Peter Ackroyd.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane (2019)?

yes

no

I've read parts of it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMar 2

[lucybellwood]

BBC World Service - The Dark Is Rising

A young boy’s time-travelling fight against ancient evil

Happy Solstice. The time has come to listen to Simon McBurney and Robert Macfarlane's dramatization of The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper.

[godzilla-reads]

Don’t call her Crow

or Rook or Raven,

for she is Jackdaw,

grey-headed outlaw,

fighting the class war,

dipping down on quick wings

to hijack a wedding ring or

ransack a knock-knack or

snatch up a gimcrack

while giving it the guffaw!

—The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris