#547: Horizon

Horizon was Barry Lopez' penultimate book, and a substantial piece of work which showed his particular love of the world, and his way of describing it. 

There is a review of the book here, by Robert MacFarlane.

MacFarlane met Barry a number of times, and has written about this, and there are videos available on YouTube of them discussing Barry's life and work.

Horizon remains one of the finest descriptions of the slow change that has taken place within the life times of those of us over the age of 50. Communicating the likely changes that will take place in the next 50 years while remaining positive is the difficult thing...

#538: Barry Lopez - external and internal landscapes

From the classic 'Crossing Open Ground'

“I think of two landscapes- one outside the self, the other within. 

The external landscape is the one we see-not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology… If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush… the smell of the creosote bush….all elements of the land, and what I mean by “the landscape.”

The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape. Relationships in the exterior landscape include those that are named and discernible, such as the nitrogen cycle, or a vertical sequence of Ordovician limestone, and others that are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter light falling on a particular kind of granite, or the effect of humidity on the frequency of a blackpoll warbler’s burst of song….the shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes."

I have this same edition.

#54: Costing the Earth - BBC Radio 4

The BBC's 'Costing the Earth' series has a great many episodes which will doubtless be of use to those teaching the new GCSE Natural History specification. It will perhaps be a useful job for someone - perhaps me - to go through the catalogue of episodes online and produce a list of those that might be of use for the new specification. *makes mental note.

Here's an example description of a recent programme:

Can writing about nature help to protect it? Charlotte Smith discusses this with three authors: Helen Macdonald, Paul Evans, and Kerri Andrews.

David Attenborough explores the wildlife and wild spaces of the United Kingdom in Wild Isles, his latest natural history series. It’s a glorious celebration but it also highlights the depletion of nature on our own doorstep, and - without a doubt - its power lies, not just in the unforgettable images, but in the strength of the script.

So, in today’s episode of Costing the Earth, Charlotte Smith hears from three British nature writers about what inspires them, how they feel the genre is faring, and whether nature writing can play a meaningful role in helping to protect our own native landscape and its flora and fauna.

Joining Charlotte, who served for three years as a judge of the Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation, are Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk, Vesper Flights), Paul Evans (Guardian Country Diaries, Field Notes from the Edge) and Dr Kerri Andrews (a forthcoming book about Nan Shepherd who wrote The Living Mountain, and Wanderers: A History of Women Walking).

Check it out.