26
@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…
27
@RobGMacfarlane
“The resilience of aquatic seed banks is phenomenal. Given the right conditions, seeds that have been underground for decades can germinate."
Great story on how re-wetting of dried-up "ghost ponds" can lead to return of rare plant species, buried in mud.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
28
@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?
29
@RobGMacfarlane
To young children, nature is full of doors — is nothing but doors, really — and they swing open at every step.
What we call landscape is to young children a wild compound of dream, spell & substance; place is somewhere they are in, not on.
30
@RobGMacfarlane
Pretty huge if it passes; under a draft plan, the US Treasury Department would tax several of the biggest emitters of planet-heating pollution to pay for the climate crisis.
That's $500bn in "climate damages".
nytimes.com/2021/08/04/cli…
31
@RobGMacfarlane
In 10-day isolation, seeing Greece burn, thinking (again) about the convulsive global response to the COVID crisis, contrasted to the calamitously slack, slow global response to the climate crisis.
Can anyone point me to good work comparatively analysing the 2 modes of response?
32
@RobGMacfarlane
"Big old trees are the keystone structures of forests on which many species depend...forked, twisted, lightning-struck, rotten [they] harbour the most life"
@GeorgeMonbiot on valuing "slow ecologies".
Send images/stories of gnarled old trees & their lives.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
33
@RobGMacfarlane
For those still somehow unclear on the issue, here it is one more time: directing racist & other kinds of abuse at @monisha_rajesh, @chimenesuleyman, @ProfSunnySingh & others for *criticising a book* is wholly, grossly unacceptable.
Here, read this 👇👇
theguardian.com/books/2021/aug…
34
@RobGMacfarlane
"Ice has a memory, and the colour of that memory is blue. It remembers in detail, and for a million years or more."
This is Utuqaq, a beautiful short film on ice's memoriousness & vulnerability, narrated in the Kalaallisut language of West Greenland.
emergencemagazine.org/film/utuqaq/
35
@RobGMacfarlane
My friend the writer Roger Deakin (1943-2006)––author of Waterlog, Wildwood & Notes from Walnut Tree Farm––died 15 years ago today, far too young.
His work still branches & ripples on in the world.
Returned today to what I wrote not long after his death: theguardian.com/books/2006/sep…
36
@RobGMacfarlane
Question: what was the last novel you read which left you feeling grief when a character or characters died?
Still so strange to experience, this magic trick that fiction can pull of causing us to fall into love, friendship and hate with beings of ink & paper.
37
@RobGMacfarlane
Here's a short round-up of ways to help welcome & settle Afghan refugees arriving in the UK, with particular focus on the work of @Care4Calais.
Do share and/or reply with other suggestions of organisations or ways to help; I know I'd be glad to hear them.
theguardian.com/world/2021/aug…
38
@RobGMacfarlane
"Slime mold can solve mazes in pursuit of a single oat flake &, later, can recall the path it took to reach it. More remarkably still, slime mold...doesn't age & it doesn't die."
From this superb essay on the *astonishing* world of slime molds/myxomycetes: orionmagazine.org/article/what-s…
39
@RobGMacfarlane
Niche request: do any field-recordists/sound-recordists out there have good-quality recordings of the sound of moths' wings, or a moth's wings, fluttering?
Asking for a project.
(Told you it was niche).
40
@RobGMacfarlane
"Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions & an economy that relentlessly ask 'What more can we take from the Earth?'"
Robin Wall Kimmerer's great essay 'Returning the Gift', re-published by @humansandnature. Yes.
humansandnature.org/returning-the-…
41
@RobGMacfarlane
River––a film I wrote w/ the awesome director @jenpeedom, narrated by Willem Dafoe––premiered this week at Telluride Film Festival.
Trailer here: youtube.com/watch?v=efHe-V…
Happy that the first reviews really seem to get what we hoped to achieve in the film.
collider.com/river-document…
42
@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)
43
@RobGMacfarlane
This Giant Sequoia, the largest tree by volume in the world, now threatened by wildfire, was prob. alive when the Giant Pyramid at Giza was completed.
I dislike referring to it as "General Sherman"; can people tell me if it has any other names?
theguardian.com/us-news/2021/s…
44
@RobGMacfarlane
"I can tell ministers from experience that hope is being destroyed in the places they never deign to visit and there is desperation in the faces they never see."
@GordonBrown coldly furious & clear on the imminent, "indefensible" £20 universal credit cut.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
45
@RobGMacfarlane
"The most astonishing element of the Elwha restoration is how quickly ecosystem changes can be reversed. Everything is connected. And with connection comes life."
Such an essay about such a story: a watershed's return to wild, fabulous life once un-dammed.
orionmagazine.org/article/a-rive…
46
@RobGMacfarlane
Huge ambition & vision.
200,000 ha of Highlands joined up to create a “vast nature recovery area”:
Afforestation
River corridor/peat restoration
Habitat-connection
Wildlife return
I’ll be walking across this region, from Shiel to Affric, next month.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
47
@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...
48
@RobGMacfarlane
I found everything about this essay deeply depressing, from the brutal ecological asset-stripping of Nauru by high-income countries, to the imminent, unregulated wrecking of the abyssal plains of the oceans.
Nevertheless, it needs reading.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
49
@RobGMacfarlane
“In short, the Amazon is dying. Entire genetic libraries and symphonies of species—trees, birds, reptiles, insects and more, eons in the making, fine-tuned by natural selection—are being wiped out to make room for methane-belching cows.” theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
50
@RobGMacfarlane
EO Wilson speaks of "The Eremocene"––the Age of Loneliness––entered as we degrade & erase the species we share this Earth.
New @NHM_London research finds UK *one of the world's most nature-depleted countries*, & the most nature-bereft in the G7.
bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
@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