I am going to say something...and then you must forget I said it OK??
I am reading an early copy of Landmarks, the forthcoming book by Robert Macfarlane to be published on March 5th.
It is very strictly embargoed until the end of February, so I can only quote this much about the book to whet your appetite because the information is readily available online...
Landmarks is Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two.
Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.
There...right, now just forget I mentioned it for now, though we do have a Landmarks project planned, and there are a few others out there reading it in readiness, so expect a whole lot more about it eventually. And if the suspense is killing you then you could catch up on previous Robert Macfarlane mentions on here...or maybe here...or even here...and if you still haven't had enough...try here...and ...oh look, a bit more here and something else here.
But meanwhile I have to thank Robert Macfarlane for reminding me about a word in Landmarks, ammil. along with a definition for the Devon word... 'the sparkle of morning sunlight through hoar frost.' I couldn't possibly take credit for remembering the word myself so wanted to honourably acknowledge my source.
Right that's that sorted, not in any way a review, I haven't really quoted anything, or breathed a word about what I think about the book have I (start saving etc)
Onwards...
Over this side of Devon, and within sight of Dartmoor, we know the 'ammil' as that and more, but then us can be patickley contrary yonder way and the book us'd turn to to avoid being confuddled and in a mizmaze would be the 1912 edition of Crossing's Guide to Dartmoor.
The Ammil : A phenomenon...that consists of a thin coating of ice, which envelopes every projecting object down to the smallest, the effect produced being most remarkable, and when the sun shines upon the ice-cased blades of grass and sprigs of heather, one singularly beautiful.
William Crossing goes on to explain that the word is derived from the old English word ammel, equivalent to enamel. It is apparently produced by a renewed freeze after a partial thaw and may often go unnoticed because the Ammil is most likely to happen up on higher ground.
I want to say that the book (which I asked you to forget I was reading) is responsible for a renewed interest in local landscape words, and, on the look-out for more about the ammil, I went to an old book Devonshire by D.St Leger Gordon first published in 1950 (with apologies as always to the librarian in Exeter who had to go searching for it in the stacks) where I found a fulsome description of the spectre when describing Dartmoor under arctic conditions...
'If there is sunlight, the frozen waterways gleam like polished silver, and when the wonderful phenomenon known as the ammil sheaths all the upland vegetation in a glittering ice casing, the diamond-bright splendour of each wild hillside baffles description...'
Wait for it. there's more...
'Then the twigs of lone mountain ash or willow become transformed into a natural lustre, or wind-glass, through which the bitter nor'easter plays the cold rattling tune specially reserved for his own skeleton fingers, and beyond the capacity of other musicians and other instruments to produce.'
I would really like there to be an ammil this instant so that I can go and look and appreciate it with all this knowledge at my gloved fingertips, but a deep freeze is not in the forecast. The nearest we had was between Christmas and New Year when the Kayaker was out and about here with his camera and took this shot of the house through the thawing frost......
Meanwhile a trawl back through my photos and I found a few examples from that bitterly cold winter of a few years ago when we awoke to a what I now realise was a very rare ammil here in the Tamar Valley.
We stepped out of the front door to see Narnia...
and this...I really understand the skeleton fingers analogy now
Amazing isn't it...and I am sure those of you who live in the Northern Hemisphere might have seen your equivalent of the ammil too, though I wonder whether it has a different name.
Meanwhile I am thinking too of all those of you in the Southern Hemisphere who would probably like to snap off a bit of ammil and drop it in your glass of something cool whilst sitting on the beach...
Soon be us again, have you noticed the dimpsy (Devon twilight) is suddenly that tiny bit lighter for a tiny bit longer...
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