I have this book too and love it! I’m a grandmother, an artist and a certified master naturalist. I teach nature journaling and nature education classes to children. I use my gift of art and my knowledge to help keep these wonders of the natural world alive in a world that seems to be taken over by technology. It’s with the children that our future lies. Teach them to love nature and they will want to do what they can to protect and preserve it. My father passed this gift to me and now it’s my turn to pass the gift.
What a beautiful legacy you carry and indeed important work you do. Everything always starts with the children. And where children grow up in communion with the wild and natural, there will be adults who respect and honour that which is alive and sustains us.
I would offer a counterpoint to the despair, which is that to me the *soul* is not in a word that can be deleted from the Oxford dictionary but in the world itself, and if we don't have the right words then we will make them up. Or - at least - when I was a feral child exploring the wilds of rural Minnesota I don't remember needing a name in order to see. I noticed and played with dandelions long before I had a word for them. My father and I made up our own place names and sometimes our own names for frogs and insects and clouds and plants. And then we got serious about it and met some scientists and learned the "official" names.
A century from now, without effort to maintain the abstraction and the underlying artifice, we might forget the meaning of blog or MP3 or broadband. But nuts will still fall from oak trees, whatever we choose to call them.
I have to say that while I love the motivation behind the Lost Words project, I don't care that much about what the bureaucrats in charge of dictionaries decide to do. I care instead that children still have a sense of wonder, if we allow them to run free instead of stare at screens. I want to raise more feral children, and I think despite the seeming momentum toward a digital-everything reality there is a rebellion brewing. One that will not be publicized. Dropping out of soul-draining systems. Noticing once again the beauty always close at hand.
I totally hear you. It’s true, soul is everything wild not just in the words themselves. Although I do feel the words we use do have some essence of life in them. Like when some say words have power, words are spells. Whether you believe that or not I do think words hold an energy and although of course they aren’t everything, they are something. We can walk around making up all kinds of words for everything and that’s great, especially for young children just learning and exploring with curiosity. Yet I think it is an interesting thing to look at this event that is taking place and wonder what sort of effects it holds. I think it’s valuable to enrich our vocabulary with words that do exist in our language that are there to describe the complexity and unique elements of nature. I personally find a lot of beauty in being able to describe a landscape or a tree or a season with more intricate words than just our every day language. I think it is an art form to use words in this way. And by erasing certain words and adding other ones there is a direction of general interest that the mainstream population is being guided into. Of course we at the end of the day decide for ourselves how we live our lives, it is an intriguing observation to make of the direction that a society takes. Remembering such beautiful words that point to the intricacies of life is simply one tool we can use to weave ourselves even closer to the natural world. It can exist without words when we already hold an awareness and connection with it. Yet it can also be enriched with them.
I hear you too, that there is magic in words and at the collective level that magic is being lost.
And - just trying to get closer to my real feelings here - perhaps the magic has already been lost, and the Lost Words and Lost Spells projects are exploring a deeper re-animation, not just a preservation of language but a reclaiming of the deeper magic inherent in lived relationship with fisher and otter and oak and acorn. "Dandelion" has no magic when they are a weed to be sprayed, and "otter" has no magic when they are a resource to be trapped, a value in pelt only.
And - sometimes I feel that the Lost Words movement has more resonance in the UK and Europe, where generations ago ancestors created those words, evolved them out of centuries of oral traditions borne of intimate relationship with the natural world. Whereas here in North America, these same English words were carried and re-applied by uprooted peoples, usually only in a descriptive or resource sense, and often to creatures or plants entirely different than the ones back home, like the robins and cedars and hemlocks. And so I find myself torn between preserving and using these words and starting from scratch, asking these beings what they would wish to be called. In the words of the blessing, letting "new names take and root and thrive and grow."
Thank you Marija for your sharing and perspectives and calls for reconnection! I'm with you!
Mmm absolutely it definitely is something that needs to be rooted in true kinship. So many different layers to it all yet I feel the foundation is being in union, relationship and remembrance with this part of our world - this part of ourselves.
And I really feel what you say there, I’ve often reflected on this land that is highly built from immigrants, people who have left their home land either long ago or recently, and the gap there is in the indigenous languages and cultures of this land where now there is missing something deeper that ties us here and that explores all of our relationships to this home. So much of it is enriched by tradition and culture that really does feel like it is lacking here huh.
This makes me think of how I felt a deeper kinship with the land when I learned all about identifying medicinal and edible plants in the wild as part of my herbalism training. It is something vital and sustaining. And there are many who do it thankfully, the wisdom is not lost and there is growing interest in it. Those who hear the call will find their way, though it is sad to me that so many are unaware of the incredible magic and medicine all around us.
While it is saddening that these words for the natural world are being replaced, there are still lots of moms and dads and aunts and uncles who will pass the words for the landscape and all our non-human kin on to their little ones.
I love that learning for you! Definitely such an enriching study that weaves one even closer with the land. I agree with what you say, there will always be the wild families and wild babies that remember these connections. This discussion always makes me think of a sort of split in the timeline that I notice in people who choose to live in the natural world and those who turn to the artificial. There is both and most likely will always be so where technology continues to advance. All we can do is choose what path we walk.
I have this book too and love it! I’m a grandmother, an artist and a certified master naturalist. I teach nature journaling and nature education classes to children. I use my gift of art and my knowledge to help keep these wonders of the natural world alive in a world that seems to be taken over by technology. It’s with the children that our future lies. Teach them to love nature and they will want to do what they can to protect and preserve it. My father passed this gift to me and now it’s my turn to pass the gift.
What a beautiful legacy you carry and indeed important work you do. Everything always starts with the children. And where children grow up in communion with the wild and natural, there will be adults who respect and honour that which is alive and sustains us.
I love that song!
and
I would offer a counterpoint to the despair, which is that to me the *soul* is not in a word that can be deleted from the Oxford dictionary but in the world itself, and if we don't have the right words then we will make them up. Or - at least - when I was a feral child exploring the wilds of rural Minnesota I don't remember needing a name in order to see. I noticed and played with dandelions long before I had a word for them. My father and I made up our own place names and sometimes our own names for frogs and insects and clouds and plants. And then we got serious about it and met some scientists and learned the "official" names.
A century from now, without effort to maintain the abstraction and the underlying artifice, we might forget the meaning of blog or MP3 or broadband. But nuts will still fall from oak trees, whatever we choose to call them.
I have to say that while I love the motivation behind the Lost Words project, I don't care that much about what the bureaucrats in charge of dictionaries decide to do. I care instead that children still have a sense of wonder, if we allow them to run free instead of stare at screens. I want to raise more feral children, and I think despite the seeming momentum toward a digital-everything reality there is a rebellion brewing. One that will not be publicized. Dropping out of soul-draining systems. Noticing once again the beauty always close at hand.
I totally hear you. It’s true, soul is everything wild not just in the words themselves. Although I do feel the words we use do have some essence of life in them. Like when some say words have power, words are spells. Whether you believe that or not I do think words hold an energy and although of course they aren’t everything, they are something. We can walk around making up all kinds of words for everything and that’s great, especially for young children just learning and exploring with curiosity. Yet I think it is an interesting thing to look at this event that is taking place and wonder what sort of effects it holds. I think it’s valuable to enrich our vocabulary with words that do exist in our language that are there to describe the complexity and unique elements of nature. I personally find a lot of beauty in being able to describe a landscape or a tree or a season with more intricate words than just our every day language. I think it is an art form to use words in this way. And by erasing certain words and adding other ones there is a direction of general interest that the mainstream population is being guided into. Of course we at the end of the day decide for ourselves how we live our lives, it is an intriguing observation to make of the direction that a society takes. Remembering such beautiful words that point to the intricacies of life is simply one tool we can use to weave ourselves even closer to the natural world. It can exist without words when we already hold an awareness and connection with it. Yet it can also be enriched with them.
I hear you too, that there is magic in words and at the collective level that magic is being lost.
And - just trying to get closer to my real feelings here - perhaps the magic has already been lost, and the Lost Words and Lost Spells projects are exploring a deeper re-animation, not just a preservation of language but a reclaiming of the deeper magic inherent in lived relationship with fisher and otter and oak and acorn. "Dandelion" has no magic when they are a weed to be sprayed, and "otter" has no magic when they are a resource to be trapped, a value in pelt only.
And - sometimes I feel that the Lost Words movement has more resonance in the UK and Europe, where generations ago ancestors created those words, evolved them out of centuries of oral traditions borne of intimate relationship with the natural world. Whereas here in North America, these same English words were carried and re-applied by uprooted peoples, usually only in a descriptive or resource sense, and often to creatures or plants entirely different than the ones back home, like the robins and cedars and hemlocks. And so I find myself torn between preserving and using these words and starting from scratch, asking these beings what they would wish to be called. In the words of the blessing, letting "new names take and root and thrive and grow."
Thank you Marija for your sharing and perspectives and calls for reconnection! I'm with you!
Mmm absolutely it definitely is something that needs to be rooted in true kinship. So many different layers to it all yet I feel the foundation is being in union, relationship and remembrance with this part of our world - this part of ourselves.
And I really feel what you say there, I’ve often reflected on this land that is highly built from immigrants, people who have left their home land either long ago or recently, and the gap there is in the indigenous languages and cultures of this land where now there is missing something deeper that ties us here and that explores all of our relationships to this home. So much of it is enriched by tradition and culture that really does feel like it is lacking here huh.
This makes me think of how I felt a deeper kinship with the land when I learned all about identifying medicinal and edible plants in the wild as part of my herbalism training. It is something vital and sustaining. And there are many who do it thankfully, the wisdom is not lost and there is growing interest in it. Those who hear the call will find their way, though it is sad to me that so many are unaware of the incredible magic and medicine all around us.
While it is saddening that these words for the natural world are being replaced, there are still lots of moms and dads and aunts and uncles who will pass the words for the landscape and all our non-human kin on to their little ones.
I love that learning for you! Definitely such an enriching study that weaves one even closer with the land. I agree with what you say, there will always be the wild families and wild babies that remember these connections. This discussion always makes me think of a sort of split in the timeline that I notice in people who choose to live in the natural world and those who turn to the artificial. There is both and most likely will always be so where technology continues to advance. All we can do is choose what path we walk.