I thought we'd stay with Underland for a while longer, especially as Robert Macfarlane is reading it for Book of the Week on Radio 4 at the moment.
I made contact with Team Underland, the small group who helped me through those years of doing Port Eliot Festival, and who have all been reading the book. We keep in touch and meet up several times a year and many of you might remember the Knit Angel. Liz made all those wonderful 'knitsuke' that we gave to all the authors who came to the dovegreyreader tent...who can ever forget Edmund de Waal and the very first one, a knitted hare with amber eyes..
or William Fiennes and his knitted snow geese.
Photographer Martin Parr took home a knitted camera, Brian Selznick a knitted 'Brian', a version of himself and there were countless other wonderful things. Robert Macfarlane actually took home a 'quiltsuke' after we had talked about The Old Ways in 2012...
I had made him a little quilted map of Lewes and the Shiants (quilted with glow-in-the-dark thread).
Though I think my favourite picture might be of Robert's well-worn boots..
I had asked Robert, during our conversation, about his next book and now here we are, seven years later, reading it
Liz can't be with us when Team Underland meet in Hay in May, but sent us her thoughts on the book. Like me she had done a slow reading and kept notes, allowing her mind to wander off wherever the book may lead, and it has been fascinating to read the impact of the book on another reader who is also a good friend. I will catch up with her in Exeter very soon for a proper conversation about it, but meanwhile (with her permission) I thought I would share Liz's thoughts here...
Thank you for the blog Lynne, what a wonderful book, I had been expecting a dark , dour looking volume, that somehow reflected the lack of light, dampness, cold and claustrophobia.
However, to my delight I received this bright, joyous, inferno coloured book, skeletal branches through which the bright blue sky is tantalisingly visible. I am now aware of the meaning of the picture and it does colour my first impressions but I still love it!!!
The "first chamber" echoed Dylan Thomas, the Summer Bright "Bees browsing, drowsy over meadow grass" was the antithesis to "Coal Black".
I have loved Dylan Thomas since childhood so I knew I would be in safe hands here - I just had to trust!!!!
I suffer terribly from claustrophobia and worried that I might find the book too hard to bear. There were many times during the reading that I was breathless, but any struggles to read on were put aside because for me this was a fantastic page turner, I wanted to find out and to know what happened. The beauty and the horror, the awe, the thrill of the adventure,
Amongst the horror though he described such gut wrenching beauty too - the red ochre hands and the burial of the young woman and her child, doubly cradled by mother and swan feathers!!!!!!!
I had absolutely no idea the extent of what we have been shoving into the ground, or the ongoing space science - any of it, so for a dark world it's certainly opened my eyes to the clandestine activities and the carelessness that we have shown our planet and the mess we are leaving for the future - I am so happy that we are now thinking there is a future and we can influence that - trying to devise signage to warn future peoples of potential hazards is so tricky though.
I wrote notes during my reading though, so I can refer back to things and like Lynne I did follow up some things - for instance, the music mentioned in various chapters - generally not my taste but probably when you are terrified and submerged they take on a whole new meaning.
It has been such a gorgeous privilege that I wanted to say something as I won't be with you all at Hay.
Please thank Robert for letting us have this opportunity and opening my eyes in such a lyrical manner.
As I was reading words beginning with the letter 'T' kept popping into my head and so I wrote them down and feel I want to share them with you....
Tingling, Tight, Taut, Terrifying, Thrill, Tick-Tock-Time, Twist, Turn, Tempt, Thoughts, Trust, Tension, Tied, Tides, Tether, Tremble, Tremor, Trip, Tilt, Tunnels, Turquoise, Tumbling, Terrorism, Tolerance.
From these words I can just about relate them back to the chapters.
Oh well sorry if it's all a messy ramble that doesn't make sense - in essence I thought it was a b****y good read.
Lots of love to you all...
And Fran, another Team Underland-er (who always organised our flower show entry at Port Eliot Festival with much laughter and vast amounts of imaginative flair), left this wonderful comment on Monday's post so I'm cut and pasting her thoughts here too, and my thanks to Fran as always for her support and perceptive insights...
When my copy of Underland arrived I too set it aside until the New Year was well over, yet winter still had some way to go. The orange cover glowed like a beacon as it sat atop a bookstack drawing me in, asking to be opened. Anything by Robert Macfarlane was going to be a joy, [although I did have some initial doubts about going underground, not a place which in all honesty appeals to me] but it was something to anticipate, and also to savour the first read of, not gulp it down as I am want to do when I enjoy a writer. I was determined to take this one slowly, one chapter at a sitting. So I worked my way through each extraordinary journey RM takes, going into places I am sure most of us were not even aware of...until now, and this book.
"The underland keeps it's secrets well." We so often look up; trees, stars, birds, clouds. We rarely look down, then only as far as our feet and the ground, do we ever consider what lies beneath?
This is a genre of book I love, as it sends me off in so many different directions. Linking up with things I have already read, reading on and around. Writing lists of new-to me -words, looking up photos of the places mentioned. This was so much more; the descriptions of places RM walked, climbed, slithered and slid into was beyond all expectations. With each chapter whole new worlds and ideas were opened up to me with the vivid and descriptive prose. It is well known that RM is a wonderful wordsmith; his ability to describe a place totally foreign to the reader yet they can 'see' it as they read is something I try not to take for granted. What a gift it is. Yet this is far, far more than another book of landscape writing. It has it all; daring do and adventure, profound thought and reflection on what we as a human race have created, what we need to do to preserve and protect, resilience, memory, the past, the present and the future. It's all there and more.
I had an instance of synchronicity whilst reading. Just the day before starting chapter 4, The Understory I had listened to a radio programme about the 'wood wide web'. And there I find him discussing the very same thing with Merlin Sheldrake, a phrase used by his old friend Roger Deakin as well. Reading on about trees which fused together I recalled a passage relating to intertwined tree roots from Captain Correlli's Mandolin sometimes used in marriage ceremonies. A few pages on and there is RM using the very same quote.
Just trying to distil my thoughts into this comment has taken awhile. It will take a lot longer to fully comprehend all the facets of taking a journey into deep time. But it is one I am profoundly grateful to have been taken on, and hopefully will be returning to further explore along with others very soon.
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