Robert Macfarlane's LANDMARKS: an acute eye upon the natural world

I WAS at The Hill of Content bookshop in Bourke Street a while back, holding a precious book voucher in my hand, desperately looking to spend it wisely, hungry for a nourishing book, hoping to find an elusive good novel, having read a few dissatisfying ones in a row. Books that lacked something, that failed to ignite or charge the soul.

I saw ‘Landmarks’ on the shelf with the lovely blue cover design. The author is the British travel writer, Robert Macfarlane. I challenged myself to discover something new. A new approach to reading. Non-fiction, travel, landscapes, language, the natural world.

I dipped into it briefly before lights out. I thought about returning it. Am I going to enjoy this?

I dipped into it again the next night and read a whole chapter. Result? Hooked.

Part of the fascination is England and Scotland, two countries I love. Then there is the remoteness of the places visited, and how the idea of remoteness and paths scarcely travelled hold a fascination. Then there is the earnestness, and poetry in the writing. Then, as I discovered as I read on, so much more.

The first line of the book: ‘This is a book about the power of language.’ Macfarlane is a wordsmith, he loves language. He writes of the ‘astonishing lexis for landscape.’ There is a glossary of language at the end of each section. Local dialect for earth, waterlands, edgelands, underlands, woodlands- the list goes on. As fascinating and extensive these lists are, and this is a very valuable lexicon to have (one wonders how much he might enjoy a glossary of Australian aboriginal dialect), this isn’t the aspect which captured my imagination the most.

 

This is a book that contains so many interesting references and observations about the natural world, and done so poetically and intelligently, that you wish you had underlined, or at least placed a removable mark like a sticky label next to all those great expressions you encountered as you read along (I did do this once with the Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, the best text I have read that screamed out a need to do this.)

The best way to represent the joy of this book is with quotations.

1.     Quoting John Muir on the power of observation, ‘The surface of the ground, so dull and forbidding at first sight…(in fact) shines and sparkles with crystals: mica, hornblende, feldspar, quartz, tourmaline…the radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling.’ Macfarlane has clearly learnt from Muir when he finds involvement in the natural world right beside the upper Thames in Essex next to a power station (‘The Wilds of Essex’, BBC2).

2.     Quoting Nan Shepard (The Living Mountain): ‘Beech-bud sheaths, blown in tide-mark lines along the edge of the roads, give a glow of brightness to the dusty roads of May.’

3.     Quoting his (deceased)  friend Roger Deakin, (the) ‘park-bench green’ of a pheasant’s neck; a hornet ‘tubby, like a weekend footballer in a striped vest.’

4.     Quoting (birdwatcher) J A Baker, ‘Edney Wood was quiet but frighteningly beautiful. The sodden glow of the millions of leaves burnt my eyes. But after sunset it was just a desolate, deserted slum of trees.’

5.     Quoting Baker (again) on animals’ fear of man: ‘A poisoned crow, gaping and helplessly floundering in the grass, bright yellow foam bubbling from its throat, will dash itself up again and again on to the descending wall of air, if you try to catch it.’

6.     Quoting John Muir (on Silver Pines): ‘Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple goldenrods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire.’

7.     Muir again, on observing the trousers of a fellow traveller: ‘…pine needles, thin flakes and fibers of bark, hair, mica scales and minute grains of quartz, hornblende, etc; feathers, seed wings, moth and butterfly wings, legs and antennae of innumerable insects…flower petals, pollen dust and indeed bits of all plants, animals and minerals of the region adhere to them and are safely imbedded.’

The book is a mixture of Macfarlane’s travels, his meetings of mutual admirers of the natural world, his tributes and reminiscences of former naturalists and landscape historians and various dictionaries or glossaries of landscapes, seascapes and weather.

One of the most interesting things for me has been to do some research, and look up the various obscure places in England and the United Kingdom that offer so much joy to this traveller and travellers of the past.

There is Brock Barrow, the Esk Valley and Muncaster Fell, the Rhinogs, the Wells of Dee, the Cairngorms… the list goes on. And it is endlessly fascinating to look these places up to discover their geographical location and wonder about the places that have provided writers with a sense of wonder.

It seems to me to be a wonderful thing to spend years on a book, filled with earnest research and plenty of first hand observation and experience, on such a topic as this, the fascination of the natural world. Macfarlane’s journey is full of respect as one’s pilgrimage to Mecca might be, or the places explored by a famous painter or photographer. Macfarlane is as careful with his language, beautifully poetic, as his mentors or heroes are, and as any poet or painter might be. One of the best chapters is about Roger Deakin, and his visit to Walnut Tree Farm. He calls Deakin a ‘water man’, and a ‘film-maker, environmentalist and writer.’ Deakin taught Macfarlane that one’s approach to open water should shift, from a place where one should fly over, drive around, or stop at, to one in which one should enter or explore. Macfarlane has the utmost respect for Deakin (and became his friend before Deakin died). Macfarlane especially enjoyed Deakin’s book ‘Waterlog.’ There must be people out there whose favourite book will become ‘Landmarks’, and hold the kind of genuine awe and respect for Macfarlane, that Macfarlane has for Deakin, and Nan Shepherd, Richard Skelton, Richard Jefferies, and John Muir, and many others.

 

The clip below is testament to Macfarlane's ability to discover natural beauty in the most unlikeliest of places.

 

 

The Heather Blazing : The Pleasures of East Gippsland Part 4

 

 

SARSFIELD NR BAIRNSDALE

JULY 11

THIS morning we decided to explore our surroundings properly in the glorious, weak sun. We saw kangaroos hopping along the western border fence last evening. We all headed out that way, opening gates. I ‘lost’ the others, preferring to wander alone in the deepest parts of the fields before the borderline. Surrounded by vast plains and heather blazing on the ground all about me, and large stretches of comforting emptiness on all sides, I wanted time to stand still. I thought about next week, and traffic, and shops, and fences and brick walls, and people and work and getting up early, and public transport, and fears and challenges and responsibilities, and I wanted time to stand still. I actually wanted time to stop. Right at that instant I felt the most free for a long time, then thought of Andrew Marvell’s refrain, which I learnt in Year 12:

‘But at my back I always hear,

Time's-winged chariot hurrying near.’

We renewed acquaintances with all of the charming creatures of the land. Sheep bursting to give birth and tiny new born lambs; the friendly and itchy black and white boar who is destined to have an unusually long life; the little pigs drowsy and pressed close to each other for warmth and comfort in their pen; ‘Boomer’ the border collie scampering around everywhere chasing our sticks; the black cows and the bull who invited us to get reasonably close to them but still keep a respectful distance; and finally the ducks and geese who are free range but act, timidly, like the ducks and geese back home at Coburg Lake.

Running adjacent to the road here sure beats running adjacent to Sydney Road back home. The gravel path next to the highway provided some softness. I made it to Bruthen just as the rest of the family pulled up in their car. Good timing.

We called in at the lovely Bruthen pub as we did a few years ago and talked to the lady at the bar about local wineries. Nicholson River wines off Duncan Road were lovely- well, the reds at any rate which is what we tried.

I have started thinking about how much S has changed. More so than A. She is wearing jeans all of a sudden after espousing derision towards them all this time. She is wandering off on her own a lot, running ahead and wanting to be independent. She wants to try all these new things. And as we drive, she has been looking ahead reading the roadway signs as they emerge, which is what I think I once did.

Our trip is almost finished. It is, of course, inevitable, and in lots of ways regrettable.

 

 

 

More Animals and a National Park: The Pleasures of East Gippsland Part 3

SARSFIELD NR BAIRNSDALE

 

 

JULY 10

WOKE up. Fell out of bed. The terrain out of Bairnsdale on the Dargo Road was a different road experience to yesterday. There were more sheep instead of cattle. We stopped sometimes to marvel at baby lambs dragging on their mother's teats. We also stopped to morbidly assess last night’s carnage- wombat and kangaroo on the side of the road. The fields, too, had changed, farming-wise. Instead of dairy farming, winter crops instead, and fields of what looked like wheat. Are wheat crops compatible in winter?

We found ourselves in Glenaladale at a horse riding camp called ‘Coonawarra.’ We were too late for a planned two hour ride. Instead the instructor rode off with experienced riders who were on time, and we were left to parade the girls around ourselves on a dirt track in circles a bit like a rugged version of the mounting yard at Flemington racecourse. Lolly was a passive agreeable horse who was more than happy to make about a hundred strolls in wide circles, one lightly built child at a time.

About twenty minutes away was the Mitchell River National Park, situated right on the Mitchell River. A skinny track led us to The Bluff- a lovely lookout over the glistening river and rugged granite cliffs. The gravel path undulated gently and in our minds took us far away. I sang ‘And The Tide Rushes In’ at the top of my voice.

Photos of landmarks that reminded us of yesteryear on the way back. Old service stations now closed and derelict; ancient farm buildings with an old wooden wagon. Then suddenly we were driving along the busy Bairnsdale Streets. Antique shops, the expansive Salvation Army store. The impressive St Mary’s Catholic Church. Simply just crossing the road alone threw me back to wandering the quiet country streets of Wangaratta when I first left home. I knew nobody and was initially quite lonely. Still, the memory gave me a romantic association and somehow I felt free, a feeling naturally that I don’t associate with streets like Sydney Road back home.

 

The exterior of the Grand Terminus Hotel behind Main Street has probably changed since the days after it was first built in 1885. The lovely nostalgic photos inside suggest this but there is a strong resemblance just the same. As we began driving home after dinner, we saw other charming old buildings to explore for another day- the courthouse and the library for example. After this, thick night fell very quickly.

 

Motoring Around: The Pleasures of East Gippsland Part 2

JULY 9

 

SARSFIELD, NR BAIRNSDALE

THIS morning we slept a bit too long on uncomfortable bedding. It was the first night of the newest Ashes cricket series, from Cardiff. A restless night. Eventually we got dressed and went for a renewed tour of the farm, visiting the animals that provided our entertainment last night. S and I were looking at the ducks and geese. Tiffany shouted out from the house ‘you can let them out!’  I did. Then S had a horrible feeling we had misheard and wondered how we could get them back behind the wire again. ‘But it’s ok’, I said hopefully. ‘Foxes only appear at night.’

We left Sarsfield mid-morning en route to Lakes Entrance. Last time we ventured here a few years ago, disaster struck. Our house became flooded in our absence because of the behaviour of an errant rat. This time, we cross our fingers.

The road to Marlo and Cape Conran is pretty. The fields on either side of the road are marshy and green. There are a number of farms dotted around, and by the look of it, they are mostly dairy farms. We stop at one point and humans and cows lovingly gaze at one another across a small ditch. The crossword keeps us busy. We are briefly stumped on a word starting with ‘O’ in reference to ‘threatening.’ It is the final word, and when we think of ‘ominously’, we have completed it.

The eastern beach at Cape Conran is rugged and pretty at the same time. A looks everywhere for shells which is par for the course, and S indulges in her new found love, handstands. I find any number of weird formations out of sea weed and sea and beach debris, and large sticks which I hurl into the water. The tide is coming in so we have to head back, but not before we explore the slate-grey jagged rocks at the beach’s edge. I imagine I am Ingmar B and I am on Faro.

We drive, calm and contented, toward Marlo. There is something about the name of the town. But we don’t really see much of it- just the pub which overlooks a pretty estuary. The girls memorably have their first ever taste of alcohol- a minuscule drop of red wine.

 

Wending our way back homeward, it is starting to darken. A comments from the back of the car that she likes the orange sunset strip in the sky. We stop, looking for adventure, at one of those dairy farms we passed much earlier. The friendly farm woman is milking her cows, by machine. Some metal implement squeezes their teats, as they chew on cow feed passively. There is much bemusement about the cascading of cow waste. It’s a good country education for all of us. The cows rotate on their metallic roundabout contraption, then peel off.

The final stop is the supermarket in Orbost. The night sky envelops us all around. We are home at the cottage, satisfied. The cricket is back on.

 

Getting Away: The Pleasures of East Gippsland Part One

SARSFIELD NR BAIRNSDALE

JULY 8

WE are in a little place called Sarsfield, near Bairnsdale. We arrived last night with just a few hours of daylight left. It is a family farm with an adjacent wooden cottage. The owner’s son, a fifteen year old boy called Ashley, immediately gave us a tour of the property. He did it with a certain relish. He loves living here. I told him we are city people, naïve and curious. Simply adorned with t-shirt and shorts, he was full of chatter and friendliness and charm. We visited the large sow who wandered over from behind her fence repaying our curiosity with curiosity of her own. Her body was warm and her back felt like the straw you find from the bottom of an outdoor broom.

Then we saw the myriad ducks and geese soldiering around, seemingly at random. Not quite as friendly, they kept a few paces ahead of us, expectant of food. Ashley collected white buckets filled with pellets. His slightly older sister, Tiffany, joined us in her tracksuit. She had food for the ducks. The four of us were to feed the pigs. Their large pen was mud-filled. We approached them excitedly and what a raucous sound they provided! The air became filled with heavy grunts and high pitched squeals. I thought of the young porkers in ‘Animal Farm.’ Some of the pigs climbed on other pigs’ backs. We splashed the food randomly on the soft surface of the muddy floor and patted their backs while they ate.

 

When Ashley finished his farm stories and the animals were satisfied we wandered back to our cottage to prepare dinner. By now, in the twilight, a heavy mist had descended spookily all about us, sitting on the surface of the land. These are all new experiences. Stars began appearing. I swear the sky towards the horizon was a distinct mauve or lilac colour.

 

LES MURRAY: WAITING FOR THE PAST- NEW POEMS

LITTLE did I know, all those years ago, sitting nervously, stomach rumbling, in some innocuous little tutorial somewhere at La Trobe University, that the big man who walked into the room to tell us about his new book of poems would soon become known as one of Australia’s finest ever poets. I’m pretty sure I met him, directly, and felt a very vague sense of awe, but then again maybe I didn’t. It seems a long time ago. I remember distinctly, however, hearing him say that it had been a long time since he had done any sort of real work. The irony of that statement was lost on me at the time. (The book we were studying was, I think, ‘The Vernacular Republic’).

So now I am finding out a bit more about Les Murray, because I have taken the plunge again after a long time of reading overseas poets, skirting around the Australian ones. Les Murray is married. Both he and his wife are old. She has afflictions and needs his care- (‘golden staph bacteria’)- just as his father did when Les’ mother died, and Les came home to look after him.  His 36 year old autistic son also needs his care. The three of them have lived on a farm in rural NSW for a long time, in a place that played a big part in Murray’s childhood as the only child of dairy farmers, called Bunyah. The Australian newspaper recently ran a beautiful, very human portrait of life in Bunyah. The Murray’s seem so real and quietly impressive. Country folk of the type that Kevin Rudd would like. The chat is about a recent car accident that could have been fatal (Murray doesn’t like seat belts), and an anthology in which Nick Cave discusses a Murray poem- ‘Who’s Nick Cave?’, Murray asks his wife. ‘I don’t know the bloke.’ And why would he?

The other slightly odd and slightly charming thing about Murray is the fact that he doesn’t like computers. He types his poems- on a typewriter. To think that that still happens. Depression isn’t ‘slightly charming’ however. Murray wrote a book of poems about ‘the black dog.’ He has had it (along with extreme hypochondria), his father had it, and his mother, Miriam, had it for half of the time Murray knew her. She often miscarried, and only Murray survived. It haunts him still to think that maybe he caused these miscarriages, or maybe that this is what his mother thought each time a new baby didn’t survive. And Murray was bullied, a lot. One can only imagine. The sum of his girth and his brain.

The new book has the enigmatic title ‘Waiting For The Past’ (Black Inc).  It is a little slim black volume with a sepia coloured dustjacket of a drawing of the portico of a handsome old house. There is a great range of topics explored in these new poems, all under a page or two in word length, perfect for reading and re-reading in order to gain maximum pleasure and understanding.

 

 

Many of these poems are built around memories, of recent times or the distant past. Murray is clearly of the age in which it is important to remember. ‘Inspecting The Rivermouth’ takes us on his journey to Hahndorf and Hindmarsh Island, and home again, somewhat matter of factly:

 

‘the barrages de richesse,

Film culture, horseradish farms,

Steamboats kneading heron-blue

Lake, the river full again.

Upstream, the iron cattle bridges,

So. Then a thousand miles

home across green lawn.’

 

A poem called ‘High Rise’ set in Beijing describes air conditioners on windows as ‘wristwatch-shaped’, hinting at the multitude of them, and ‘burglar bars’ on each window to the tenth floor. Murray remembers the days before television, seeing American films at the drive-in, and being transported into another world where people on screen would ‘kiss slow with faces crossed’, enchanting to any naïve kid.

A significant memory contained in one of the best poems, called ‘High Speed Trap Space’, is of a collision in the car with animal with ‘big neck, muzzle and horns…’ on a narrow road in the bush on a ‘rainy dark’ night. The feeling of entrapment and claustrophobia is contained in ‘Nowhere to swerve-but out between trunks stepped an animal…’. The car is described as ‘our little room’ racing on to ‘a beheading.’ The deadly seriousness and potential violence of the situation is captured graphically:

 

‘No dive down off my seat would get me low

enough to escape the crane-swing of that head

and its imminence of butchery and glass.’

 

Murray braces himself for the worst, and even though the collision is avoided, it may as well have taken place:

 

‘My brain was still full of the blubber lip,

the dribbling cud. In all but reality

the bomb stroke had still happened.’

 

The whole Azaria Chamberlain/ dingo story is evoked poignantly but succinctly in ‘Being Spared The Inquests.’ A localised fright- ‘a toddler’s scream’- but the horror is avoided as:

 

‘Our valley came this close

to a deadly later fame.’

 

The unfortunate schism between Ireland and its northern neighbour is featured in ‘All of Half Way’ where the speaker is advised to take off his green cap before he gets to ‘Coleraine’ (Derry) - it is only ‘our equestrian team cap’, and ‘colours aren’t yet mortal in Australia’, says the poet wryly.

 

Sometimes the memory is focused on a clearly stated location, as in ‘A Denizen’, about an octopus at Wylie’s Baths. By using ‘bing’ I can discover that Wylie’s Baths is an ocean tidal pool near Coogee, NSW. Murray sometimes offers precise locations in order to take you there. The ‘octopus is dead’, right ‘below the circus balustrade/ and the chocked sea tiles.’ Once entertaining the children by hanging ‘from its cupped feet’, it now, chlorine-infested,

 

 ‘…lies, slop biltong,

 beak and extinct pasta

out in the throwaway tide

and will leave with the wobbegong.’

The ‘wobbegong’ I know from reading Tim Winton, but ‘biltong’? Apparently a dried, cured meat from South Africa.

 

The poem ‘Growth’ refers to the growing cancer in ‘friendly Gran’, as well as the growth in the speaker who grieves because he is ‘barred’ from seeing her (‘…Grannie’s death had/ been hidden away, as cancer/ still was then…’), and growth in the crossing of a threshold of sorts: ‘I was hugged and laughed over/ for the miles I’d covered’ in a long walk trying to make sense of it all.

 

Elsewhere Murray celebrates, in his memory, 1960, which ‘Brought the Electric’- ‘the new yellow glare/ that has reached us at last’; recalls the sober experience of being on ‘Bench Seats’ when the polite conversation of a girl with Downs Syndrome is met with ‘a whispered grimace of mirth’ between two women she is addressing; and chillingly recounts a high school massacre in which ‘…a celibate/ victim of years ago divines/ We’re shooting back now.’

 

Besides a strong focus on memories, Murray main preoccupation seems to be matters of family and matters of health, as you might expect from a man writing in his seventies. Poems about the aging body, hospital visits, body replacements and falls.  In ‘Diabetica’, in a poem that just might be closing in on Sylvia Plath confessional, Murray writes of a man who ‘…yawns upright/ trying not to dot the floor/ with little advance pees.’ Murray, it appears, is visiting his wife Valerie in hospital in ‘The Plaster Eater’, she who is undergoing (another?) knee operation. The end of the poem features one of the loveliest tributes I have seen between two old lovers-

 

‘I, butter boy, sipper of vinegar,

am amazed as ever how you,

dear pardoner, kindest wife,

always blame yourself

as now, beyond hospital staph

and the overworking knife.’                                  

 

‘Vertigo’ tells the story of a speaker who sounds just like Murray who has fallen in the shower-room of a hotel he is staying in (always worse when it’s not your place). The pragmatic nature of the speaker is illustrated by his understanding that falls of this kind mean it’s ‘…time to call the purveyor/ of steel pipe and indoor railings…’ Furthermore, there will come a time with the arrival of:

 

‘…the sunny day when

street detail gets whitened to mauve

and people hurry you, or wait, quiet.’

 

 

This enthralling and varied slim booklet of poems was all created on Les Murray’s beloved Brother typewriter- as discussed in his poem about a third of the way through this collection- ‘The Privacy of Typewriters’:

‘I am an old book troglodyte

one who composes on paper

and types up the result

as many times as need be.’

 

For Murray, the computer prints ‘text that looks pre-published.’ And it doesn’t awaken or seduce his senses like the typewriter does:

 

‘I fear a carriage

that doesn’t move or ding,

no inky marching hammers

leaping up and subsiding.’

 

The typewriter has its advantages- mistakes made- ‘whiteouts where thought deepened’, and ‘wise freedom from Spell Check’; and lo and behold if you hit the wrong key- ‘a writhe of child pornography’ might suddenly fill the screen, and, scarily,

 

‘…the doors booting open

and the cops handcuffing me,

to a gristlier video culture

coralline in an ever colder sea.’

 

Oh, to one day drive off, far away, to Bunyah, NSW with a bottle of red, and knock on the door of the Murray’s, just like Ted Hughes did forty or so years ago with his brother Gerald, when they drove to meet their painting hero, Hans Heysen, in Hahndorf, SA.