The kinship of the land and William Wordsworth

How do you think of land? Is it something we humans own, or is it actually part of our community?  A reader made the connection from my previous post to a book that explores different ways of thinking about our environment (https://thewildernessroad.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/a-sand-county-almanac/ ). This post picks up that theme, bringing in William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”.

Wordsworth writes this about nature:

“well pleased to recognise

In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.”


Lif4Gd for him involved a kinship with the natural world: he finds there the “anchor of my purest thoughts”, nature is a “nurse…guardian of my heart…soul of all my moral being”.

Around my home town of Shrewsbury lie the Shropshire hills.  They are majestic, and I understand the idea of the “kinship” and “community” of the land as I see them every day.  They start to feel “a part of you”, and perhaps this is what makes Lif4Gd?

The Shropshire Hills: taken from the Long Mynd,
looking at Caer Caradoc (top right) and The Wrekin (top left)

I have owned a dog since starting married life, and of course our pets (and especially dogs!) provide wonderful company. Dog walks, though, have also made me more aware of the “blessed company” of the natural world as I have gone out and about walking:

Thrush hurls her song

in curls and spirals and dead straight lines;

The trees stand as still as time;

the hills look down benignly;

the wind converses enigmatically;

the river merely suggests itself so quietly;

even the buttercups nod their heads with glee;

I feel I am among

such blessed company.

Some Questions to Ponder

  1. Have we got it wrong thinking about land is just a commodity?  Should we consider the land as an intrinsic part of our communities?  What would that mean for social and political policies?
  2. Do you ever consider land “kin”, or even “blessed company”?

I’d love to hear comments if you’ve been inspired to think about Lif4Gd!

Best wishes,

Michael


Long live the wilderness with Gerard Manley Hopkins

Are you ever drawn to natural, wild, wilderness places?  This post was inspired by a line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins – “Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet” – and also by a surprising natural encounter I had recently.

Hopkins’ poem celebrates wild natural beauty but is quite a challenging read because of the way he likes to use unusual words and unusual syntax.  If you want to read it, I suggest you just let the bits you don’t follow just “wash over you” and just enjoy the general impression of the wonderful way he uses words…

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,   

His rollrock highroad roaring down,          

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam           

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.      

.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth                      

Turns and twindles over the broth             

Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,     

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.            

.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew        

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,                      

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,              

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.    

.

What would the world be, once bereft    

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,              

O let them be left, wildness and wet;               

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

.

For me, Lif4Gd involves feeling connected with nature. In Shropshire, where I live, the wilderness is never far away, and is part of what makes life good:

The wild birds inhabit these hills

               and I, a walker,

glancing down the valley

               dazzled by gleaming lights

                              flung across the fields like necklaces

I feel connected with the wind

               the grass under my feet

                              God’s sky above my head.

Yesterday as I was walking Rae Brook Nature Reserve in Shrewsbury I spotted a dipper (these are usually mountain stream birds in the UK) dancing around the edges of the Rae Brook.  “Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet” indeed.  Nature is full of surprises and offers a deep connection to humanity.

A dipper

Some Questions to Ponder

  1. Do you feel connected to, or separate from, nature?  How could you get more connected?
  2. What places of natural wildness and wilderness mean a lot to you?  What have been some of your most surprising and memorable encounters of connection with nature?

By all means leave a comment if the post or the questions made you want to share your own thoughts.

Best wishes,

Michael