Tags
earth, ecological literacy, ecology, life, nature, Orion Magazine, place, Robert MacFarlane, teaching
A heavy rain last night, and now a cool morning. Tall grasses adorned with seed heads give indication of the slightest breeze, as they dip and swirl as if in conversation. It’s a language I can’t decipher in words, yet I feel their gentle contentment in the burgeoning sun and the drips of water sliding from their slender leaves.
There is birdsong, as usual these mornings, but I cannot tell you what birds are singing. After 28 years of living, I can identify only the songs of chickadees, red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, crows and ravens. I can hear the high screech of hawks overhead, but do not know what type of hawk it is. For a few years I knew the sound of saw-whet owls and the different beats of woodpeckers, but they are memories of my memory now, and I am in need of a new lesson.
In a recent essay titled Landspeak in Orion Magazine, Robert MacFarlane writes about the deletion of nature-based words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, and the way human relationship to nature changes as we lose the ability to interact with nature through language. He writes:
“A basic literacy of landscape is falling away up and down the ages. And what is lost along with this literacy is something precious: a kind of word magic, the power that certain terms possess to enchant our relations with nature and place. As the writer Henry Porter observed, the OUP [Oxford University Press] deletions removed the ‘euphonious vocabulary of the natural world—words which do not simply label an object or action but in some mysterious and beautiful way become part of it.'”
A few weeks after reading MacFarlane’s essay, I heard a commentary on Vermont Public Radio, titled “Documenting the Decline,” in which Vic Henningson notes MacFarlane’s writings, and says:
“As the number of botanists declines and words relating to nature disappear from dictionaries, the evidence suggests we’re becoming strangers to the natural world, victims of self-inflicted ecological illiteracy. And when we no longer understand nature, no doubt we’ll finally stop worrying about climate change. We’ll still enjoy looking at nature, but as novelist and naturalist John Fowles noted, landscape alone is a “bare lifeless body” without the flora and fauna that give it speech, movement, and dress. ‘Without natural history’ hewrote, ‘the world is only a fraction seen. [Imagine] not knowing any flowers, any birds. [T]o so many, they are meaningless hieroglyphs.'”
It took me 19 years to begin learning the names of trees, plants and wild animals in a meaningful way. As a student on the Adirondack Semester, I was immersed in nature, and our ecology class gave us the language to enter the landscape. Six years later I took lessons in the language of Vermont’s natural landscape through the Wisdom of the Herbs School, and I opened myself to a new world of wild edibles and medicinals. I learned that the natural world is always open to us; transforming our understanding of nature from a “fraction seen” to a whole web of living beings is a matter of transforming our own relationship with the life around us. It’s a matter of opening ourselves to the wonder of learning and the mystery of the natural world.
Now I can tell you about the differences between cultivated plant varieties you grow in your garden, and how to increase your yields with organic growing practices, but on the edge of the garden the field begins, and beyond that the forest spreads like a waves over hillsides and mountains. At the chatter of a squirrel or the call of a bird, my son stops and listens, his mouth forming a perfect circle, his eyebrows lifting his eyes wide open in exclamation as he points toward the sound–Mama, did you hear that?!
I see in him our natural place in the layers of the world; how we are constantly drawn to nature, to learning those layers and becoming a part of the landscape around us, how this is wired within us. His curiosity wakes up my own, and I realize the joy and responsibility of teaching him this language. It means I have to learn it, too, and for that I am grateful.
Moving, deep thoughts this morning – thank you Katie! I am fascinated with the power and intrinsic value of this thing we call language. I am going to look into the writings of MacFarlane and the VPR piece by Henningsen… I cannot agree more with the sentiments. I am a beginning student of Western Abenaki,the language of Vermont’s indigenous people, and it has opened my eyes to the original world here and much, much deeper. It speaks of a way of being that is sorely lacking, and the absence of which is showing. Have a great day in this wonderful place we live!
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Very interesting, Katie. Sad & horrifying…the gradual loss of words used to describe and enchant ourselves & others about the natural world. And so happy and glad that you have a little one to help you see the world anew, to learn about the world anew and teach him about the world! Yes! That’s one of the innumerable gifts of parenthood. xo
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I heard that same commentary on VPR, and I was so sad to hear about the change in dictionaries! Katie â your writing is SO BEAUTIFUL. Every entry inspires us and reawakens us to what we know is important. Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts into print and for sharing them with us! XO, Wendy Valastro and family
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Thanks for reading! It’s so great to stay connected between our celebrations at the Lachman’s 🙂
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Thanks for sharing this Katie. Interesting info about the dictionaries, but my favorite part is about your son. I have similar interactions with my daughter. Some of my favorite moments as a parent are now when she (at only 2 1/2 years old) tells me to listen or look at something in nature. I had a set of field guides that I didn’t use for years, but now, we look at them several times a week, identifying animals and birds we see on our walks and nature adventures. As I teach her, I am learning.
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Yes! I am learning and re-learning so much. The depth of wonder a baby, now toddler, has brought to my life is something I couldn’t have imagined before, and I’ve always been one to swim in wonder.
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