“Lying there among the trees, despite a learned wariness towards anthropomorphism, I find it hard not to imagine these arboreal relations in terms of tenderness, generosity and even love: the respectful distance of their shy crowns, the kissing branches that have pleached with one another, the unseen connections forged by root and hyphae between seemingly distant trees. I remember something Louis de Bernières has written about a relationship that endured into old age: “we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.” […] I think of good love as something that roots, not rots, over time, and of the hyphae that are weaving through the ground below me, reaching out through the soil in search of mergings.”
- Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey.
Category: currently reading
“The chronicle of Prydain is a fantasy. Such things do not happen in real life. Or do they? Most of…”
“The chronicle of Prydain is a fantasy. Such things do not happen in real life. Or do they? Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we believe we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”
- Lloyd Alexander, preface to the The Book of Three.
- Lloyd Alexander, preface to the The Book of Three.
“Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love…”
“Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save.”
- Robert Macfarlane, Underland.
- Robert Macfarlane, Underland.
“Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.”
“Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.”
- Robert Macfarlane, Underland.
- Robert Macfarlane, Underland.