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@RobGMacfarlane
Striding Edge on Helvellyn was a weather-blade today, dividing light & shadow, white & green, snow & grass.
Crossed it with my son.
Summit plateau was polar, with blue landskeins of receding ridge-lines out towards the Irish Sea.
27
@RobGMacfarlane
This is extraordinary.
Stay the course.
Life! twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Hello -- 5 years ago today, a book called The Lost Words by me & @JackieMorrisArt was published.
Here we are, nervous & young(er), on that day.
In our wildest dreams we couldn't have guessed what the planting of that acorn would cause to flourish.
Thread...🧵🪡
29
@RobGMacfarlane
Outstanding (breaking) news: the National Trust’s Board of Trustees has today confirmed the earlier members’ vote, & announced that it will no longer issue any "trail hunting" licences on @nationaltrust land.
👏 👏 keeptheban.uk/post/breaking-…
30
@RobGMacfarlane
🔥BREAKING (bad) news🔥
Wealthy landowners the Darwalls have won court case to extinguish our long-exercised right to wild camp responsibly on Dartmoor—only place where it’s been legal in England
It’s a terrible decision. Follow @Right_2Roam/@EveryonesStars to resist & protest.
31
@RobGMacfarlane
After all we've learned about octopus sentience, intelligence & life-ways in recent years...how/why can humans be devising methods of mass-production for these playful, clever creatures?
#DontEatOctopuses
Please read this, by @BBCMarshall.
bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
32
@RobGMacfarlane
Hello — just to say that I’m @laurenlaverne’s Castaway on today’s edition of Desert Island Discs, going out 11am, @BBCRadio4.
I think I prefer rocky islands to sandy ones.
Islands of light are pretty cool too.
View from the Pembrokeshire cliffs last night.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
33
@RobGMacfarlane
Vanishing point on an old railway line out in the Fens.
Seven or eight skylarks, singing their hearts out at all dark matter, lifting the spirit.
Heard skylarks yet this year? Where & when?
34
@RobGMacfarlane
Used this beautiful river as a path for a few hours today.
Along the way saw a kingfisher, a water-vole, a huge striped pike fanning over a gravel-bed, and…an otter.
The full-house of a chalk-stream in wonderful health.
35
@RobGMacfarlane
On the far point of the Pembrokeshire headland you can see here, someone had left a purple plastic bag of dog-shit.
Why wd you both be drawn to walk to that place...& content to leave that behind?
I carried it away, wished I hadn't had to.
How best to solve the shit-bag problem?
36
@RobGMacfarlane
If you’re under a clear sky in the UK right now, step outside & look westwards — Jupiter & Venus are glimmering in near-perfect alignment with the centre-point of the outer curve of a crescent moon.
Bright & wondrous & rare.
37
@RobGMacfarlane
Hello -- just to say that, in case you'd be interested to listen in, I'll be the castaway on Desert Island Discs this coming Sunday.
Guesses at the 8 tracks, book & luxury welcome (but I can neither confirm nor deny, etc...).
@laurenlaverne was the best!
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
38
@RobGMacfarlane
Un-Innocent
Current @PrivateEyeNews on sanctimonious otters, @innocent smoothies & green-washing.
39
@RobGMacfarlane
It's #internationalmountainday.
A celebration of these deep-time-keepers, these perspective-givers, these spirit-lifters.
A recognition of the communities that live among them. And a recognition of their vulnerability.
Send photos of the mountains that mean most to you.
40
@RobGMacfarlane
Well this utterly delights me.
A Dadaist re-write of The Old Ways by harvest mice.
Thank you to my avant-garde collaborators!
Book become a place of shelter, words as winter nest. Sometimes that’s what writing can feel like. twitter.com/paulpowlesland…
41
@RobGMacfarlane
Writing about House Sparrows today; our convivial, cheery, cheeky, chattering & disappearing neighbours.
Sparrow: from Old English spearwa.
AKA spuggie, spadger, cuddy, roo-doo.
Do you know other folk/common names for them (plus region of use)?
Painting by @JackieMorrisArt
42
@RobGMacfarlane
Writing today about this ivory figurine.
It's c. 30,000 years old; found in the Hohle Fels cave in the Swabian Jura.
A tiny Ice Age bird, wings swept back tight to its body.
Such grace of being & making.
A Diver? Goose? Cormorant?
It knows where it's going.
[Photo @uni_tue]
43
@RobGMacfarlane
First blossom today on this apple tree, grown from a pip gathered by my friend Roger Deakin from Kazakhstan's ur-apple forests. He died 3 yrs later.
I always mark the day; think of Rog.
A memory-tree. You've probably got one yourself.
Story of the tree: emergencemagazine.org/essay/east-to-…
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@RobGMacfarlane
“Once inside a wood, you walk on something very like a seabed, looking up at the canopy as if it were the surface of the water, filtering the descending shafts of sunlight…”
(Roger Deakin, Wildwood,
2007) twitter.com/KHefferon/stat…
45
@RobGMacfarlane
Fabulous!
First global attempt to map vast underground fungal networks.
Big step in bringing fungi within conservation frames (flora, fauna *&* fungi).
As a cartophile & mycophile who wrote a book on underworlds, this story is *right* in my wheelhouse.
theguardian.com/science/2021/n…
46
@RobGMacfarlane
Loweswater (Northwest Lake District) was a pure sky-mirror for a couple of days last week.
Everything doubled.
Photos by my Dad (@johntmacfarlane over on Instagram)
47
@RobGMacfarlane
Out filming in a silver birch forest; frost & sun, geese overhead.
Bar(k) codes everywhere, scanning for beauty.
Fairy-tale-forest trees—& also among the first to re-colonise after the glaciers retreated at the end of the Ice Ages.
Watchful, tough trees.
Love silver birches.
48
@RobGMacfarlane
“It sticks in my craw. We are not accepting favours from our masters. We are not their serfs. It isn’t the 19th century. Dartmoor is not a private gentlemen’s shooting estate.” theguardian.com/environment/20…
49
@RobGMacfarlane
Silver winter light out there today & the trees round here are suddenly all flame, blaze & furnace.
This is the best infographic I know explaining the biochemistry of autumn/fall's fire-palette.
All hail anthocyanins!
By the excellent @compoundchem
Send me autumn colours...
50
@RobGMacfarlane
Never much liked the phrase "kill two birds with one stone".
Last week I was introduced to the aviphile variant: "feed two birds with one scone."
Brilliant!
I'll leave the scone/scone pronunciation controversy well alone, save for saying it clearly doesn't rhyme with stone...
@RobGMacfarlane
Books: Is A River Alive? (WIP) Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways, etc. | Films: River, Mountain, Upstream | Nature, climate, people | Prof @Cambridge_uni