Landmarks (32 page)

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Authors: Robert Macfarlane

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‘pastoral crooks … many who do not are unnoticed’
:
NNL
, pp. 42, 75, 76.

‘Even trees which have some semblance … their outline changes’
: ibid., p. 15.

‘walk all round [a] meadow … scheme of colour is perceivable’
: ibid., p. 13.

‘wavelets … so unwind the pattern’
: ibid., p. 110.

‘This changing of focus … reference to me, the looker’
:
LM
, pp. 10–11.

‘the leaves are enlarging … the tinted petals uncurling’
:
NNL
, p. 5.

‘a thousand thousand buds … even to number them’
: Richard Jefferies, ‘Hours of Spring’, in
Field and Hedgerow
(London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889), p. 8.

‘Sparrows crowd every hedge … there must be thousands’
:
NNL
, p. 27.

‘astonished and delighted … in the most secluded country’
: ibid., p. 28.

‘There are about sixty wild flowers … vetches, and yellow vetch’
: ibid., p. 38.

‘great green book … are quite forgotten’
: ibid., pp. 151–2.

‘Before it is too late … like Mars, but glowing still’
:
P
, p. 32.

‘The heart … longs for the beautiful’
: Jefferies, ‘Hours of Spring’, p. 9.

‘[T]he goldfinches … continue to proceed’
: Richard Jefferies,
The Hills and the Vale
(1909; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 293.

‘The earth is all in all to me … thought’s self within’
: Jefferies, ‘Hours of Spring’, pp. 8–9.

‘I am not a part of nature … the rain without’
: Edward Thomas,
The Icknield Way
(1913; London: Constable, 1916), p. 281.

‘delicate grasses … into the dust’
:
NNL
, pp. 6, 117.

‘white granular powder’
: Rachel Carson,
Silent Spring
(1962; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 3.

‘The dust of London … the inanimate things around us’
:
NNL
, p. 171.

‘dust … which falls on a ledge’
: Richard Jefferies,
The Story of My Heart
(1883; London: Longmans & Co., 1907), p. 1.

‘immense City’
:
NNL
, p. 20.

‘the atmosphere of London … out into the cornfields’
: ibid., p. 41.

‘the aurora of dark vapour … presage, gloom, tragedy’
: ibid., p. 147.

‘in course of time I shall find out … there never was any earth’
: Richard Jefferies, ‘My Old Village’, in
Field and Hedgerow
, p. 329.

‘decisively worsened … possessed of an animate threat’
: Simon Grimble,
Landscape, Writing and ‘The Condition of England’
:
1878–1914, Ruskin to Modernism
(Edwin Mellon: Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter, 2004),p. 54.

‘The old men say their fathers … cut himself a path’
: Richard Jefferies,
After London; Or, Wild England
(1885; Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1983), p. 1.

‘the deserted and utterly extinct city of London’
: ibid., p. 129.

‘old red brick wall … bunches of wall grasses flourish’
:
NNL
, p. 65.

‘the great nature … closely to the metropolis’
: ibid., p. 82.

Chapter 9: Stone-Books

‘fragment of gabbro … quartz-veined grit’
:
POB
, p. 96.

‘What is a pebble? … we must examine it more closely’
: ibid., pp. 13, 53.

‘wax-like lustre … difficult to describe’
: ibid., pp. 68–9.

‘Gneiss (pronounced “nice”) …
schistos
, meaning “easily split” ’
: ibid., p. 59.

‘the rudiments of wave action … the smoothing of pebbles’
: ibid., p. 15.

‘frozen into its underside’
: ibid., p. 42.

‘Collectors of pebbles are rare’
: ibid., p. 11.

‘combed the beaches … glittering collections’
: ibid., p. 12.

‘All I know is that … and eat pebbles’
: Vladimir Nabokov, interview with Alvin Toffler,
Playboy
(January 1964).

‘I have used the findings … purposes altogether unscientific’
:
AL
, p. vii.

‘creatures of the land’
: ibid., p. 181.

‘The image I have sought to evoke … all in one piece’
: ibid., p. vii.

‘an uncommon type of book … recognized categories’
: typescript contained in the ‘Readers’ Union’ file, Jacquetta Hawkes Archive, University of Bradford. The text was written by Hawkes to accompany the 1953 Readers’ Union edition of
A Land
.

‘There is … a passion of love and hate’
: Harold Nicolson, ‘Sermon in Stones’, review of
A Land
,
Observer
, 3 June 1951.

‘something of their imaginative range … tragically overdue’
: H. J. Massingham, ‘Sermons in Stones’, review of
A Land
,
Spectator
, 1 June 1951.

‘highly emotional pitch … mystery of its manifestations’
: Hawkes, ‘Readers’ Union’, Hawkes Archive.

‘an absurdly tender age … trees in our emotional lives’
: ibid.

‘only the most severely technical … more imaginative purposes’
: Jacquetta Hawkes, handwritten response to Beacon Press’s request for background material for a 1991 reissue of
A Land
, Jacquetta Hawkes Archive, University
of Bradford (a typed and amended version was sent to Beacon on 8 March 1991).

‘ice without and fire within … also to nature and the land’
: Nicolas Hawkes, interview with Robert Macfarlane, 4 April 2011.

‘When I have been working … agreeably conscious of my body’
:
AL
, p. 1.

‘fine silhouettes of the leaves … only orbit that was open to it’
: ibid., pp. 1–5.

‘does not come to an end with its rock and its soil’
:
LM
, p. 41.

‘There I lie on the plateau … the total mountain’
: ibid., p. 105.

‘sweet short turf … felt the wondrous present’
: Richard Jefferies,
The Story of My Heart
(1883; London: Longmans & Co., 1907), p. 20.

‘I imagine … all the particles of the universe’
:
AL
, p. 30.

‘every being is united … simplest forms of contemporary life’
: ibid., p. 32.

‘inside this delicate membrane … history of life’
: ibid., p. 31.

‘Consciousness must surely be traced back to the rocks’
: ibid., p. 30.

‘the simple reaction … herring in Cretaceous slime’
: ibid., p. 203.

‘affinity with rock … Blue Lias’
: ibid., pp. 100, 99.

‘Rodin pursued the idea … rather as always a part of it’
: ibid., p. 99.

‘It is hardly possible … which these thoughts bring to me’
: ibid., pp. 98–9.

‘just … escape[d] disaster’
: Jacquetta Hawkes, Introduction to 1978 edition of
A Land
(London: David and Charles, 1978), p. 1.

‘has to be told in words … the senses must be fed’
:
AL
, p. 36.

‘a continual whipping … dead march of the intellect’
: ibid., p. 37.

‘the glow of desert suns … the once boiling granite’
: ibid., pp. 60, 14.

‘the [Neanderthal] skeleton … fresh with chalk-dust’
: Christine Finn, introduction to
Jacquetta Hawkes: Archaeo-Poet (1910–96),
at
http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/53/58
.

‘Jurassic water snails … praise their God’
:
AL
, p. 70.

‘Stand at Moreton-in-the Marsh … from desolation to desolation’
: ibid., p. 91.

‘our composed Britain’
: ibid., p. 45.

‘speak of insecurity … known to us as the British Isles’
: ibid., pp. 16, 24.

‘blessed heritage of farmers … radar and jet propulsion’
: Iain Sinclair, ‘The Festival of Britain’,
Guardian
, 22 April 2011.

‘regional difference … restoration of their country’
:
AL
, pp. 100, 201.

‘for a faint but palpable … mountain regions’
: ibid., pp. 218–23.

‘the land under him … with a fierce longing’
: T. H. White,
The Book of Merlyn
(Texas: University of Texas Press, 1977), pp. 109–12.

‘sense of community … parson, shepherd and clerk’
: J. B. Priestley,
Postscripts
(London: William Heinemann, 1940), p. 12.

‘the racial stock’
:
AL
, p. 180.

‘for months … Yours faithfully, Henry Williamson’
: letter from Henry Williamson to Jacquetta Hawkes, 1 February 1952, Jacquetta Hawkes Archive, University of Bradford.

‘a rock … full of fossils … stone to speak’
:
AL
, p. 98.

‘When we concentrate on … not of the now’
: Vladimir Nabokov,
Transparent Things
(1972; London: Penguin, 2012), p. 7.

Chapter 10: The Black Locust and the Silver Pine

‘I am a poetico- … ornith-natural, etc.!’
: John Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, quoted in Terry Gifford,
Reconnecting with John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), p. 42.

‘The world is big … good look at it before it gets dark’
: John Muir,
John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p. 313.

‘Everybody needs beauty as well as bread’
: John Muir,
The Yosemite
(1912), in
John Muir: The Eight Wilderness-Discovery Books
(Diadem: London, 1992), p. 714.

‘The clearest way … a forest wilderness’
: Muir,
John of the Mountains
, p. 313.

‘Writing … is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind’
: John Muir, letter to Sarah Muir Galloway, 17 April 1876, reprinted in
John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
, ed. Terry Gifford (London: Baton Wicks, 1996), p. 221.

‘an infinite storm of beauty’
: John Muir,
Travels in Alaska
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), in
John Muir: The Eight Wilderness-Discovery Books
, p. 724.

‘Wildness is a necessity … but as fountains of life’
: John Muir,
Our National Parks
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), p. 1.

‘glorious … conversion’
: John Muir,
My First Summer in the Sierra
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), in
NW
, p. 161.

‘This fine lesson charmed me … meadows in wild enthusiasm’
: John Muir,
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), in
NW
, pp. 138–9.

‘opened to … inner beauty’
: ibid., p. 139.

‘old bondage days’
: Muir,
My First Summer
, in
NW
, p. 161.

‘ “But where do you want to go? … any place that is wild,” I said’
: Muir,
The Yosemite
, in
John Muir: The Eight Wilderness-Discovery Books
, p. 613.

‘gradually higher … best places we came to’
: Muir,
My First Summer
, in
NW
, p. 153.

‘We are now in the mountains … we seem to have been so always’
: ibid., p. 161.

‘Most people are
on
the world … touching but separate’
: Muir,
John of the Mountains
, p. 320.

‘One’s body seems homogeneous throughout, sound as a crystal’
: Muir,
My First Summer
, in
NW
, p. 228.

‘Squirrelville, Sequoia Co. … they are in
me-ee-ee

: letter from John Muir to Mrs Ezra Carr,
c
. 1870 (dating uncertain), in
John Muir: His Life and Letters
, p. 140.

‘indeed … the tree-lover’s paradise’
: Muir,
My First Summer
, in
NW
, p. 209.

‘silky gray carpet … three inches high’
: ibid., p. 281.

‘forest kings … 300 feet in height’
: John Muir,
The Mountains of California
(New York: Century, 1894), in
NW
, pp. 436, 424.

‘knowledge … time in the almanac sense’
: Muir,
Mountains of California
, in
NW
, p. 403.

‘silvery luster … satiny’
: Muir,
My First Summer
, in
NW
, pp. 251, 249.

‘wind-history … storm story’
: ibid., pp. 185, 235.

‘beneath the interlacing arches … paw out oval hollows’
: Muir,
Mountains of California
, in
NW
, p. 445.

‘lithe, brushy top … continuous blaze of white sun-fire’
: ibid., pp. 467–70.

‘broad gray summit … a beautiful shrubby species’
: Muir,
My First Summer
, in
NW
, pp. 241–2.

‘becomes so adhesive … no small geological significance’
: ibid., p. 227.

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