Good morning! A poem today. Earlier this week saw the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth – a poet who has, for the past couple of centuries, often set the ideological terms of the writing of landscape and nature. I’ve been thinking about Wordsworth’s particular “Romantic” landscapes quite a lot in recent months, as I’ve also been reflecting on the ideological backdrop of contemporary nature writing – particularly where ideas of “wildness” are concerned. Over the past few years, there’s been a real trend for writers using words like “wild” and “wildness” in surprisingly lazy ways. For example, in an otherwise interesting book I recently read, the word “wild” is repeatedly used in reference to the kinds of Derbyshire landscapes which are defined by dry stone walls and sheep pasture – landscapes which are the opposite of wild, since they’ve been shaped for centuries by human habitation, human labour, human management. Contemporary ideas of “wildness” often don’t reflect the lived reality of rural landscapes – but are rather a particular kind of anthropocentric projection – a fantasy which seeks to put nature in a box as either an exotic other, or as an imaginary place of origin, to which the (often urban) visitor, wishes to return, or reclaim. But why should the imprecise use of words like “wild” and “wildness” bother me?
I feel that these words and their usage matters because – in much the same way that Wordsworth used imaginative language to disguise the human labour that had shaped the working landscape he describes in Tintern Abbey – contemporary nature writers are similarly now defining landscapes through a language which underplays the human. All too often, I think, contemporary ideas of “wildness” actively ignore the profound and very complex kinds of symbiosis that exist, and which have long existed, between humanity and the natural world. Talking about rural Scotland as a “wild” place, for example, has the effect of erasing the value and importance of the kinds of sustainable, practical stewardship of our natural environment routinely practiced by our crofting and farming communities. In short, I feel that contemporary ideas of “wildness” might disguise or erase the importance of the human in rural landscapes, in ways that are neither respectful towards the communities who live and work there, nor are particularly helpful in taking urgent debates about the environment further forward.
So here’s a poem I wrote about landscapes as made places. Spot the Wordsworth echo!
Fabrication
This landscape is not your looking glass, not
a place to find yourself
or see yourself reflected.
Yet many make the world their mirror
As if, like Milton’s Eve, the self might only signify
in recognition.
Eve, your garden is not feral but a
made place, never “sportive wood run wild.”
If you don’t see the hands that cut these
“hardly hedgerows” you aren’t seeing
in your craving
to be seen.
What you call wild
is in fact a space of no beginning
whose origin’s your yen for
the unmediated.
With our sheep or wolves
we set the terms of Eden.
Still, nature shrugs,
gets on with it.
Knowing this landscape
is made and remade
through placed stones, human bounds,
and bones
does not eliminate
its wonder,
value or
precarity.
In seeing the raven, I’m
blest by
the grudge it grants
to my sight.
There is comfort
in its
indifference.
Thank you for the post. It inspired a couple of divergent thoughts to pop up inside my head. The first, well, I live in Alaska where there really are a lot of truly wild places which are untouched by human hands . . . though I cannot say untouched by human feet. That was a fleeting thought. I laughed out loud at the next thought that went through my head. When my first husband and I were married, we went to a local hummingbird sanctuary for our honeymoon, and participated in the almost-obligatory guided trail walk through the woods to see all the hummingbirds. The guide announced how the sanctuary had been ‘rescued’ and brought back to its natural-wild state, but at that particular moment in time, Peter and I were walking on very old concrete and he remarked to me, ‘aah, primordial concrete’ at which we both laughed a lot.
I thank you for the post, Kate, not only because it in itself was very thought-provoking, well-written, and reminded me that the wild I may see and the not-so-wild you see are really not the same and that we should honor those who have worked to tame what is no longer wild. But, I also thank you for the triggered memory. My Peter passed away in 1992, I had married again; Jose passed away last year. I am working from home and having a difficult day of isolation today . . . that triggered memory has lifted my spirits to the highest heights which is a great way to enjoy the evening. May you also be so richly blessed as you have blessed so many.
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Angela, I often think of the truly wild places in the world, like the one in which you live – with a huge sense of awe. You must have so many joyful memories of Peter and Jose, and I’m glad your spirits were lifted as you thought about them today. Now I’m thinking about you, in wild Alaska, here in not-so-wild Scotland.
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I share your reluctant rapprochement with contemporary nature and landscape writing, Kate, language that not only erases our made places but also inserts a dualism that I find problematic. We, we humans, are also nature and wild. Perhaps the current pandemic will remind us of that, given that the explanation with the most currency, still seems to be that the virus “jumped” from wild animals to human animals.
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So much to agree with here but yes, Rebanks and Macfarlane and their words. I especially applaud Keturah’s comment re out inability to look at what has worked for indigenous people. Thank you for the peom!
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Love. Your sensibility evokes one of my all-time favorites, Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man.
Read it below, if you like:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90
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that’s high praise indeed, Pam – one of my all time favourites too!
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Oh Kate – I do hope you and Tom collect these wonderful poems and photos into a book.
So many thanks.
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I really appreciate and agree with your perspective on this, Kate. It seems particularly appropriate to this time and, for me, place. As we humans wait to resume ‘normal life’ (or not?), I have been obsessing over how best to restore the wildlife habitat on the family farm where we are building our new home…thus simultaneously putting our print on the land and yet hoping to welcome back more wildlife than have enjoyed the rest of it during several decades of cattle eating its grass, trampling its tree seedlings, etc. Your poem is wonderful and captures much of what I have been feeling. Thank you.
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You are keeping me going both practically with your patterns and yarn and in my head with your words. Tom’s photos give me ideas for embroidery too. Thank you so much.
Stay safe all.
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yes, and as far as i understand it the same applies now and in the past to western misunderstanding of the land management techniques used by indigenous peoples/ First Nations, often as part of strategies of co-option of said land…
thanks for the lovely poem also
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an important point, thankyou
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I remember reading similar observations in your West Highland Way book. To me it points out our unwillingness to encounter people who are different from us, to submit to seeing a place through their eyes. To do so, we have to be the one who is ignorant, who doesn’t belong. As someone who lives in an apparently very wild place (the Canadian Arctic), but who came here with the express purpose of learning from and serving the people who belong to this land (for they consider themselves as belonging to it, and not the reverse), I am continually struck by the attitudes of those who come up here and act as if no one has been here before. The problems of life up here are so long-standing that most people want to show up with their solutions, not sit with the people and accept the discomfort. I’m being vague but it’s early in the morning for me; I’ll trust you know what I’m getting at.
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Well said, Rebecca.
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Absolutely! I think we could all do with some of your humility, Rebecca, being always aware of our ignorance, our difference, our not-belonging, and starting from there.
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There is so much urbanisation now and it seems to me that those who do not live in rural communities feel the need to offer a patronising superiority to communities they do not understand. Although I live in a small town not far from Edinburgh, I am well acquainted with remoteness of Sutherland and it’s ‘wildness’. If using these words in my own writings, I am doing so to describe an atmosphere such as a powerful storm r an emotional response to a view/event rather than the description of a landscape. There are many ways to describe the latter more accurately, whether shaped by humankind or not. Is this ‘lazy’ usage not also an indication of ignorance and lack of desire to engage with something that is not understood by the user
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Kate, your writing is so powerful and thought provoking. Do you have a book of your poems?
In our area we have many Forest Preserves where the land is definitely wild….no maintenance, no cutting/harvesting of fallen trees in swampy area. Nothing there but acres and acres of lovely nature , maybe shared with a few deer. Want to sit and take it all in for a while? No benches to sit on…find a branch from a fallen tree. Nothing is allowed to be taken from here….no sticks, pebbles, or plants.
Wonderful places for meditation and contemplation!
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Very well said. The word ‘wild’ is about as useless as ‘nature’ these days.
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Love the raven verse, beautifully crafted!
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So much importance in this. There is a difference in the man shaped land that we value in our national parks, and that is held painstakingly in stewardship by its valued farmers and managers; to those places which are actually wild – ie untouched by man. We need to value the stewardship of both and recognise those that work tirelessly in this.
And a beautiful poem!
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My partner still laughs when he remembers the stunned expression on my face as his mother described the Peak District as a ‘wild, untamed landscape’. I managed to winch my jaw back up so I could respond that is an intensely man managed landscape! I sometimes think the only wildness we have in the UK is where flora and fauna appear defiantly in places where they have been supposedly pushed out, such as dandelions growing in cracks in concrete paving. James Rebanks writes powerfully in ‘The shepherds life’ about the experience of being invisible in a working landscape shaped by farmers like him but perceived by others as purely natural, recreational and scenic. Robert Macfarlane’s Wild Places is also an interesting read, including on the misconception of the Highlands as a wilderness free from the influence of people when their imprint is all over the landscape.
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