‘[r]edstarts flew from tree to tree … is what makes it graceful’: WL, p. 91.
‘park-bench green … footballer in a striped vest’: NFWTF, pp. 43, 208.
‘Angels are the people we care for and who care for us’: Roger Deakin, unpublished notebook entry.
‘only interested in everything’: Les Murray, quoted by Roger Deakin, WL, p. 3.
‘go on and on … settle for ever in one place’: Edward Thomas, The South Country (London: J. M. Dent, 1909), p. 161.
‘I am Hansje, born and bred … to see the earth clarified’: letter from Hansje te Velde to Robert Macfarlane, 15 November 2011.
Chapter 5: Hunting Life
‘cloud-biting anchor shape’: P, p. 30.
‘Autumn … like the arch of Orion’: ibid., p. 29.
‘Dear Sam … an infinity of sight’: letter from J. A. Baker to Don Samuel, September/October 1945, Baker Archive, Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex.
‘a prickly customer’ … ‘loner’ as an adult: Doreen Baker, undated interview with David Cobham, edited transcript, Baker Archive.
‘Binoculars and a hawk-like vigilance … myopic human vision’: P, p. 93.
‘Patching Hall Lane … singing lustily’: ibid., p. 282.
‘Sunday May 9th … as a bird’s throat’: ibid. Compare Nan Shepherd: ‘It is, it is, the blackbird singing! / The beat of time is in the note. / Yet its own infinite arises / From that small perishable throat.’ ‘Blackbird in Snow’, ITC, p. 17.
‘plunged into the wet wood … sharing that joy’: P, p. 284. When Baker came to re-describe this incident in The Hill of Summer, he omitted Sid from his account and implied he was alone. See ibid., pp. 204–5.
‘Saturday November 20th 1954 … revellers in the wind’: ibid., p. 289.
‘Tuesday November 1st 1955 … autumn slum of trees’: ibid., p. 311.
‘clear varnish of yellow … Rembrandt oil-painting’: ibid., p. 296.
‘Wednesday April 23rd 1958… tricky and strange’: ibid., p. 372.
‘glorious light … or a falcon, presumably’: J. A. Baker, ‘Peregrine Diaries’, entry for 6 January 1957, Baker Archive.
‘the possibility of it’s … flashed across my mind’: ibid., entry for 10 January 1957, Baker Archive.
‘The north wind … pleached lattice of the hedges’: P, p. 103.
‘Four short-eared owls soothed out of the gorse’: ibid., p. 67.
‘Savagely he lashed himself … rim of the black cloud’: ibid., p. 70.
‘like a small mad puritan with a banana in his mouth’: ibid., p. 105.
‘glowed purple and grey like broccoli’: ibid., p. 113.
‘five thousand dunlin … gleamed with golden chitin’: ibid., p. 52.
‘the pages dance with image … that marshland drama’: Kenneth Allsop, review of The Peregrine, London Evening News, 23 March 1967.
‘sabring fall from the sky’: P, pp. 124–5.
‘A falcon peregrine … splinters of white wood’: ibid., p. 49.
‘The peregrine lives … maps of black and white’: ibid., p. 46.
‘rings of small black stones’: ibid., p. 55.
‘into dark twiggy lines … blue and silver mouth’: ibid., p. 128.
‘Wherever he goes … there be purified’: ibid., p. 48.
‘Evanescent as flame … the white helix of the gulls’: ibid., p. 51.
‘a strong feeling of proximity, identification’: ibid., p. 126.
‘The body of a woodpigeon … We shun men’: ibid., p. 92.
‘The [book’s] strange and awful grip … hawk’s feathers, skin and spirit’: Allsop, review of The Peregrine, London Evening News.
‘his usual loose-limbed panache’: P, p. 73.
‘the hunter becoming the thing he hunts’: ibid., p. 92.
a British raptor specialist called Derek Ratcliffe had published a landmark paper: D. A. Ratcliffe, ‘The Status of the Peregrine in Great Britain’, Bird Study 10 (1963), 56–90. Ratcliffe’s paper, among other factors, led to a control of DDT use in British agriculture, and the peregrine population saw a slow climb. In countries where pesticide use was not controlled the results were catastrophic: 2,000 breeding pairs in Finland in 1950 had been reduced to 16 pairs by 1975.
‘the filthy, insidious pollen of farm chemicals’: P, p. 31.
‘Few winter in England … the ancient eyries are dying’: ibid., pp. 108–9.
‘As I approached I could see … We cannot tear it away’: ibid., pp. 112–13.
‘I hope to have the good fortune … Friday Feb 10th’: undated letter from reader, Baker Archive.
‘rough sea-billows … among them are the lost-words that I sought’: see The Kalevala, trans. John Martin Crawford (London: G. Putnam, 1889), Runes XVI and XVII, pp. 161–80.
one of which shelters a Quaker burial ground from the eighteenth century: this plantation has been cut down since the time of writing.
‘limned the edges of its streams … eaves of its woods’: L, p. 48.
‘seventeen thresholds that grant access to the moor’: ibid., p. 133.
Hare-gate: an opening in a hedge … winter is filled with a torrent’: ibid., pp. 195–6.
‘Could I reconstruct … with which to sound the landscape’: ibid., p. 149.
‘Where before I collected fragments … to call upon the landscape’: ibid., p. 137.
‘Perhaps there is a glimpse … by virtue of their difference, their strangeness?’: ibid., pp. 138–9.
‘place-name poetry … beauty of certain lexicons’: Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton, Wolf Notes (Cumbria: Corbel Stone Press, 2010), p. 27.
‘Ulpha is still inhabited … can be uncovered and celebrated’: ibid., p. 9.
‘gathered pace, taking in tributaries … in the Late Bronze Age)’: Richard Skelton, Limnology (Cumbria: Corbel Stone Press, 2012), endnote.
‘receding below the threshold … of all melodies’: L, p. 126.
Chapter 7: North-Minded
‘the malevolent north’: see Margaret Atwood, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
‘it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well’: AD, p. xxviii.
‘stand toe-to at the water’s edge … boots in six hours’: ibid., p. 252.
‘the classic lines … extended, and quiet’: ibid., p. xxiii.
‘monotonic … plains of open water’: ibid., pp. 229, xxiii.
‘chitinous shell … staghorn lichen next to them’: ibid., p. 254.
‘the grace of accuracy’: Robert Lowell, ‘Epilogue’, in Robert Lowell: Collected Poems, ed. Frank Bidart (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 838.
‘removed and exceptional part of Scotland’: DM, p. 8.
‘a pencil-stripe of light … relentless daylight over Norway’: ibid., p. 60.
‘green silence … the returning cold’: ibid., pp. 63, 18, 21.
‘A little stone jetty … extraordinary water’: ibid., p. 38.
‘noticed everything … put away for the winter’: ibid., p. 73.
‘[f]ine gradations … runs the length of the room’: ibid., p. 71.
‘to capture the moment, lost and yet preserved forever’: ibid., p. 7.
‘which dies even as … catch its likeness’: ibid., p. 147.
‘conservatorie’: Thomas Browne, Urne-Buriall (1658), in Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall, ed. Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff (New York: NYRB Classics, 2012), p. 114.
‘the predatory loss that shadows all human pleasure’: DM, p. 14.
‘basalt rocks bordering the Baltic … the high sun on the sea’: ibid., p. 6.
‘black dog flickers … edge of the lawns’: ibid., p. 65.
‘We have gathered things … the place where we live’: ibid., p. 24.
‘moony silver … the bright sky into itself’: ibid., p. 66.
‘breaks forward into the sunlight �
�� light into itself’: ibid., p. 74.
‘hold the dimming sky … islands in the archipelago’: ibid., pp. 64, 70.
‘All the years I have been writing … laughing, painting out of doors’: ibid., p. 40
‘In a winter-hammered landscape … ignorance falling away from us’: Barry Lopez, About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory (1998; London: Harvill, 1999), p. 122, and AD, p. xxviii.
‘The sharpness of the morning frost … magnifying lens’: DM, p. 165.
‘depthlessly clear’: AD, p. xxiv.
Chapter 8: Bastard Countryside
‘drosscape’: see Alan Berger, Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007).
‘edgeland’: see Marion Shoard, ‘Edgelands’, in Remaking the Landscape, ed. Jennifer Jenkins (London: Profile, 2002), pp. 117–46.
‘crapola’: Philip Guston, quoted in Philip Roth, Shop Talk (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), p. 135.
‘bastard countryside … the noise of humankind’: the passage was added by Victor Hugo to the 1861 edition of Les Misérables. I use the translation given by T. J. Clark in ‘The View from Notre-Dame’, in The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 179.
‘the messy limbo … outer-Outer London’: Kenneth Allsop, Adventure Lit Their Star: The Story of an Immigrant Bird (1949; London: Penguin, 1972), p. 9.
‘asphalt … noose’: Iain Sinclair, London Orbital (London: Granta, 2002), pp. 17, 140.
‘frontier line to civilisation’: Richard Jefferies, Preface to Wild Life in a Southern County (1879; Toller Fratrum: Little Toller, 2011), p. 15.
‘Why, we must have been blind … but we saw them not!’: Walter Besant, The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies (1888; London: Chatto & Windus, 1905), p. 167. Besant, it should be noted, was not wholly approving of Jefferies, considering his talent narrow and certainly confined to non-fiction.
‘broke most radically with … human history’: Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (London: Penguin, 1967), p. 15.
‘Wilderness! … I have never forgotten it’: Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839), ed. Jill Muller (New York: Spark, 2005), p. 439.
‘London looks so large … so barren and so wild’: Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857), ed. Harvey Peter Sucksmith (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2008), p. 131.
‘unseen influence … under the calm oaks’: NNL, p. ix.
‘quitting the suburb’: ibid., p. 85.
‘rubbish heaps … garden flowers about the metropolis’: ibid., pp. 90, 154.
‘coloured … like a continuous garden’: ibid., p. 169.
‘very large cinder and dust heap … any stray morsels of food’: ibid., pp. 87–8.
‘berry year … eight in a stalk’: ibid., p. 119.
‘put forth green buds … flowers not sown in order’: ibid., pp. 130, 133.
‘fully two thousand … their very wings seem to flap together’: ibid., p. 129.
‘It would be very easy … method of knowing’: ibid., p. ix.
‘Everyone must find their own locality … you find yours yonder’: ibid.
‘keep[ing] an eye … as it really is’: ibid., pp. xi, 11.
‘bluebells … unseen, except by rabbits’: ibid., p. 23.
‘The landscapes I have in mind … regarded as invisible’: Paul Nash, Outline: An Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 229.
‘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.