Old Words and New Meanings: A Reflection on Robert MacFarlane’s Landmarks
First, let me apologize for the lack of content lately. Summertime is a strange time for teachers. On the one hand, it ought to mean more time as you aren’t activel planning for daily lesson plans. On the other hand, you’re exhausted from the maranthon-sprint that is the school year and are already planning for next year. Add all of this to a complete change in your daily schedule and getting anything done can be difficult.
This past weekend, however, I was on vacation in Port Orchard, WA with my wife, children, and in-laws and this gave me a little more time. At first, that time was dedicated to reading and seeing the sights. And so, on our first evening here, I finished Robert MacFarlane’s book Landmarks. It is a truly fascinating book about, as so many of MacFarlane’s books are, language and nature. In this book, each section is dedicated to a kind of environment, which almost serves for MacFarlane as a kind of epistemology, a way of knowing. In the chapters we visit moorlands, the peaks, the very rocks that lay the foundation for Britain and Ireland. As we traverse these land-, sea-, and skyscapes, we hear from MacFarlane about the authors who inspired him. Some of them he’s met in person, others have only existed for him on the page and in the places they wrote about.
At the end of each chapter is a glossary fileld with vocabulary for describing these places. The words may come from a variety of local dialects and languages like Manx, Scots, Gaelic, Shetland, and more. Others are scientific and technical terms. And others still derive from poetry. Gerard Manly Hopkins, a favorite of mine, appears in many of the glossaries.
This book took me longer than it ought to have to read. I think I started it sometime a few years ago and only recently picked it up because I didn’t want to do the reading I need to for reviews and for work. I think the main reason the book took so long to finish is because of its emphasis on language. This may sound odd for those who know me. I love language. Words are my love. Language is our way of speaking reality, of engaging in and participating in the one who is the Word. But the issue for me is how so many of these words are words I want to love, to use, but feel as though I can’t because I’m so displaced from their source. I don’t live on the Isle of Man. My time in the Eastmidlands was brief. And what’s more, those words are rooted to those places, not to here. And the words that are rooted here are not mine. The belong to the First Nations peoples who lived here long before any of my ancestors washed up on the shore.
But, as I spent three days staring out at the Puget Sound, watching the harbor seals play or sleep on the dock, seeing the cormorants, gulls, and bald eagles search for food, I wonder if I can’t transplant at least some of those words just as I am a transplant that was born here. I’m not a native species, but maybe I can add to the world around me, not by tearing down what has come before, but by learning about it, from it, and making my own small contributions.
Lewis once wrote in his essay, ”Bluspels and Flalansferes,” that metaphors, which stand at the root of all language, sometimes need to be not just reinvigorated, but invented. Sometimes, old metaphors must be set aside and new ones must take their place. Maybe that’s part of my role here in the Inland Northwest, in the land of the Kalispell. To learn. To listen. And when appropriate to add myself, not as a way of succeeding or replacing what has come before, but merely by noting that I am here.
David Russell Mosley is a poet and theologian living in Washington State. His second book of poetry, Liturgical Entanglements, is out now. If you want to support his work, please consider donating through the button below.
