#570: Blandscapes

An old tweet from Robert MacFarlane that I came across while clearing images from my phone. Some places are devoid of natural history and 'life'... what would you suggest as examples of blandscapes?

#567: Natural History Reading List #24: "Landmarks"

The latest in a series of posts on suggested books that could be in a GCSE Natural History subject library. The library is building but a long way from the contents of my GeoLibrary blog which has over 600 books on its virtual shelves.

'Landmarks' was written by Robert MacFarlane. 

It was published in 2016, so is coming up for ten years old, which makes me feel old.

There are several reasons for including this book on the reading list.

This description from a New York Times review provides some sort of sense of the contents of the book.

It includes some lists of words which describe some quite specific aspects of landscapes - particularly of words which are disappearing from dictionaries and common usage.

Expanding the vocabulary of young people with respect to Natural History will hopefully be an important part of the new course once the specification is revealed.

#562: New from Robert MacFarlane

A new film by Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane.

It's a documentary.

Here are the details from the film maker:

In 2020, during a lock down that marked us all, I discovered The Lost words book. This illustrated object simply celebrated words that qualified the nature around me in northern Europe. These words were blue bell, fox, badger, willow, conker, magpie, raven... 

Common nature names that had been taken out of the Oxford Youth Dictionary in 2007 and to which the authors Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris had given a second life. As I was relearning the landscape around me, it seemed unimaginable to lose ways to point it out, understand it and care for it.

The philosophy behind The Lost Words - between grief of disappearance and creative action - became something I wanted to bring to the screen; It is there that I found hope.

Sarah Konrath's (Indiana University) studies show that the level of empathy in younger members of the earth's population has gone down by 40% in the last ten years. Considering the easy access to the hard truths of a world in crisis, this is not surprising. Furthermore, when looking at documentaries that warn of the state of our planet, we quickly notice that catastrophe is written into the fibre of each film, warning and debilitating. The kindness in The Lost Words was what struck me; and its kind but subversive approach is what gave me the desire to make a film that invites us to change our point of view on our position as interconnected earth dwellers.

This is not a film about the book, but a film inspired by its creative and hopeful gaze. It is in this aesthetic of care that Lost For Words inserts itself; holding out a hand to the human and more-than-human.

Here's the trailer:

#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...

#506: Nature connectedness

This two word phrase is likely to become increasingly important to many taking the new specification I would imagine. I would be surprised if an increase in this was not added as an outcome from studying GCSE Natural History.

Nature connectedness is intended to replace the current disconnect between young people and the natural world flagged up by a number of writers, including Robert MacFarlane.

How can this be fostered in young people?

Perhaps time spent outside?

A recent BBC News article suggested as little as 20 minutes is enough to have an impact.

Ideas welcome. How best to do this?

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

#389: Humans and nature

The phrase 'more than human' is one I hadn't heard until a few years ago, when I attended a session run by Sharon Witt and Helen Clarke.

More than Human Rights is an interesting concept.

I'm part of the MOTH (More-Than-Human) Rights collective, based out of @nyulaw.
We've just released this book of essays, conversations & collaborations on the subject of MOTH rights & much beyond.
It's free to all as a PDF/Kindle download.
Pls share on.
👉https://t.co/5AqE5K7dba pic.twitter.com/in1JInOLVn

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) July 29, 2024

Check out their work here. 

#388: Riversong

Riversong is here, and free for anyone to use.

Hello: this is 'Riversong', a "broadside ballad" which protests the slow death of rivers in the UK & around the world––& sings for their revival.

'Riversong' is free to print, share, set & sing, speak aloud on a riverbank, post on walls or windows, adapt, translate, perform,… pic.twitter.com/767BzPoUll

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) October 27, 2024

 

#352: Solastalgia

Solastalgia was mentioned in the Guardian last year in a piece by Damien Gayle.

It's a word I've been familiar with for a while now, as it's a feeling I have had often in the last decade in particular as extreme weather has become more common, and local environments have shown signs of changing, and not always in a good way.

It was used in a piece back in 2016 by Robert MacFarlane who described its origins in the writing of Glenn Albrecht.

The context was the impact of coal mining on the surrounding area.

Solastalgia can be defined as: the “distress produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment”.

On the VeryWell website, there is also a suggestion that:

"When the places that matter most to us—our homes, our lands, and our communities—are disrupted, changed, or threatened, we may also sustain a less visible but no less damaging impact that is carried with us emotionally"

Here's a TED talk with Albrecht talking about the term:

And a BBC Futures piece on the idea.

It also points out quite rightly that other cultures have similar words or expressions, and that they probably predate ours given the various despoilation of the world by colonisation...

Solastalgia is not just a first-world concept. Sri Warsini, a researcher at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia is looking into instances of solastalgia that occur in developing countries such as Indonesia, following natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, finding that the loss of housing, livestock and farmland, and the ongoing danger of living in a disaster-prone area, challenge a person’s sense of place and identity and can lead to depression.

This field—the life it contains & sustains—will soon be gone. Today chirping grasshoppers, twittering goldfinches, a vole’s squeak; pretty grasses, swirling. I got to know this land; to it I let myself attach meaning & importance. But I can’t protect it, so must face up to loss. pic.twitter.com/T9wXXMdNpR

— James Gilbert (@jamesgilbertmr) September 25, 2023

#268: Nature has rights - or not...

Another new low from the UK government from a week or so ago, which I've just got round to posting here... there've been quite a few other related stories as well.

This Guardian article has been retweeted a number of times over the last few days, with the same sort of response from a great many environmental organisations and campaigners.

“It’s paradoxical because it recognises rights for non-human entities like corporations but denies them to non-human living beings. It’s contradictory because, while rhetorically acknowledging different cultures and Indigenous worldviews, it nevertheless imposes the western understanding of rights and law,”

Robert MacFarlane has written on the fact that rivers were recognised as being a living thing, and Patrick Barkham has also written for The Guardian on this theme.

#257: Declining plant awareness

This is an area that I have previously blogged about, going back to work by Robert MacFarlane, which led to the original 'Lost Words' book being created with Jackie Morris.

There were articles published when the Oxford Junior Dictionary announced it was dropping some nature words back in 2015.

The words missing were natural words, and there were others which replaced them that were to do with technology. One could argue as well that these technology words were far more ephemeral than the natural words - technology changes and things become redundant.

This is a more recent academic paper on the same theme. This is very readable.

It starts with some striking words, which I can see being used as the basis for a section in a textbook:

From our earliest settlements, we have been reliant on plants to provide shelter, fuels, and sustenance and are the basis of nearly all terrestrial ecosystems (Lev-Yadun et al., 2000). Plants perform a huge variety of essential functions, from forming soils to producing oxygen, yet their neglect is costing us dearly (Bardgett et al., 2021). From birth to death, plants dominate every aspect of our existence—they are our silent partners in civilization (Adamo et al., 2021). There is virtually always a plant or a plant product in your field of vision. Despite this significance, plants are currently underappreciated and neglected in many sectors of modern society, and there has been little research into identifying the measurable consequences of our plant apathy toward societies' challenges.

It also references Robert Pyle's work referring to the "extinction of experience".

Pyle describes disconnection from nature via a “cycle of impoverishment  that  is  initiated  by  the  homogenisation  and  reduction  of local  flora and  fauna,  followed  by  disaffection  and  apathy.”  Ultimately,  this  impoverishment  is  intensified by a “shifting  base-line,” progressively decreasing expectations of the quality and function of  the natural areas individuals are exposed to.

#229: Hedges in the news

Hedges were in the news with a report on the BBC News website by Helen Briggs saying that the length of the UK's hedgerows would go round the world ten times. It's based on some CEH data here.

Of course it used to be many times more, but miles of hedgerows have been lost - grubbed up to make more space, or to make larger fields to make farming more 'efficient'. Hopefully some protections are now put in place, and other new hedgerows can be planted - I noticed some going in on the edge of my Norfolk village last weekend.

The news article was picked up by a few Twitter accounts.

About half of Britain's hedgerows were lost 1940s-1990s, mostly in England - intensive farming & development.

Loss has slowed since 1990s, but neglect, damage & removal remain big threats.

Government promised in 2023 to create/restore 72,000km of hedgerows by 2050. https://t.co/8pXmqgQiRv

— Rachael Unsworth (@LeedsTours) January 30, 2024

There are plenty of overlaps with the potential content of the GCSE Natural History specification. Hedges are a linear habitat. Their existence reveals landscape change and links to the past, including enclosure. They are important for biodiversity, and vary in form in different counties.

Hedgelink has also shared the link to the mapping which has been done by CEH. 

Amazing hedgerow mapping from @UK_CEH 🌳 Hedgerow height and length has been mapped across England to build up a picture of the state of the nation's hedges. Click here for the data: https://t.co/UFDOQFz22w https://t.co/qlGi5iNDV5

— Hedgelink (@Hedgelink_UK) January 30, 2024

A comment on hedges from Robert MacFarlane to end this post. We will certainly be coming back to consider how we can create a resource related to the changing history of hedges. They need to be conserved and cherished according to this FT piece.

I like the description here by Robert of hedges:

Hedgerows are miraculous habitats: skinny wildwoods, bird-larders, carbon stores, species shelters.
Now first full (LIDAR) map of England's vast hedge-network is out.
Laid end to end they'd girdle the Earth ten times.
Let's celebrate hedges! Pics, stories?https://t.co/5Dx8UspiVq

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) January 30, 2024

He asked for contributions on the theme of hedges, and here is one that caught the eye, and is worth returning to:

"A bewitched curtain"...
here is the full poem, The Hedge, by @ZaffarKunial from "England's Green" (Faber) pic.twitter.com/Vdwb1sfwmI

— CeasefireNow (@lucyinnarnia) January 30, 2024

Update

Hedgerow schemes were featured on the BBC's Countyfile programme. There are some lovely quotes about the value of hedges in this feature on hedgerow restoration. 

The piece explores what makes a good hedge.

They have been part of our landscape since the Bronze Age, but more than half have been lost since the Second World War. Watch from 27 minutes in.