Robert Macfarlane is an author who probably needs no introduction on the Ramblings; his books are much lauded, he’s well known for his concern about, and work for, the environment, and he’s made a number of appearances here. However there are still many I’ve not read, so I was happy to stumble on “Landmarks” in a charity shop, though it did take me a little while to get to it! However, timing is all, and the book made the perfect end of summer reading, polyread alongside Muriel Spark! “Landmarks” was perhaps not quite what I was expecting; despite that, however, it was a marvellous and thought-provoking read which threatens to send me off on a Macfarlane/environmental reading binge!!

First published in 2015, “Landmarks” followed Macfarlane’s trio of works on landscape: “Mountains of the Mind”, “The Wild Places” and “The Old Ways”. This book also explores the land and the world around us, but through the lens of the language we use, and in particular the words we use or lose. It’s described as “a field guide to the literature of nature, and a vast glossary collecting thousands of the remarkable terms used in dozens of the languages and dialects of Britain and Ireland to describe and denote aspects of terrain, weather, and nature”, and each individual chapter explores the landscape, or aspect of it, through different writers. Macfarlane focuses on mountains, woods and water, northlands, edgelands and other features of the land, exploring the ways different authors have engaged with those areas and the language they’ve used to describe it.

So, for example, the chapter “The Living Mountain” deals with Nan Shepherd and her wonderful book of that name, as Macfarlane follows in her footsteps, and relates his experiences in the Cairngorms while providing fascinating commentary on Shepherd’s writing. “The Woods and the Water” is concerned with Roger Deakin and what is known nowadays as ‘wild swimming’ (when I was younger it was just swimming…); “Stone-Books” was a particularly interesting chapter, covering as it does the writing of Jacquetta Hawkes and her epic work “The Land”. I kept coming across little synchronicities, like the chapter “North-Minded”; I am, of course, from the North and very fond of it, and I have a book by the author featured in this chapter, Peter Davidson, called “The Idea of North” – it’s been lurking unread on Mount TBR for far too long…

The stern curve of a mountain slope, a nest of wet stones on a beach, the bent trunk of a wind-blown tree: such forms can call out in us a goodness we might not have known we possessed.

Underpinning all this is, of course, the narrowing down of our linguistic richness. The opening sections of the book are triggered by the removal from the Oxford Junior Dictionary of a vast number of words which will be familiar to many of us of an older age about nature; children and young people no longer have that wide range of words in their vocabulary, which reflects the more restricted world so many of them live within, tethered to entertainment screens of many sorts. In fact, Macfarlane would later release a beautiful book called “The Lost Words” in conjunction with artist Jackie Morris, and a copy lives in my place of work; it’s a gorgeous item in its own right, and also records so many terms which are slipping out of use. And “Landmarks” operates in the same way, creating a ‘word hoard’ of those local or regional or obscure words and phrases that if not recorded will be lost to us. So in between each chapter, Macfarlane creates a glossary; words relating to flatlands, or wetlands, or woodlands and so on; fixing for all time, or as long as his work survives, some marvellous language which can be saved from oblivion. ‘Nab’ or ‘strob’; ‘clitter’ or ‘gryke’; all are evocative words, and thankfully preserved here.

Intriguingly, after the first publication of “Landmarks”, Macfarlane was flooded with correspondence from readers sharing other words with him for his hoard; obviously, only a fraction of what he collected is preserved in the book, so I can only hope that the rest of his collection is safely preserved in some kind of archive which will keep this language safe for the future. As George Orwell recognised, language gives a power; if we cannot describe something, how can we understand it, help it, fight the bad and promote the good. In a world where we are systematically damaging nature, hopefully something like “Landmarks” will help us to engage with our planet more, help its landscapes to survive and bring back lost language. As you might have guessed, I was totally absorbed in “Landmarks” and absolutely loved it; it’s a memorable and inspiring book, and will continue to make me look at the world around me anew. I really *am* tempted now to go on a Robert Macfarlane and related reading binge…