Asphalt Quote by Robert Macfarlane

“Woods and forests have been essentialt to the imagination of these islands, and of countries throughout the world, for centuries. It is for this reason that when woods are felled, when they are suppressed by tarmac and concrete and asphalt, it is not only unique species and habitats that…” quote by Robert Macfarlane — Download Open image

“Woods and forests have been essentialt to the imagination of these islands, and of countries throughout the world, for centuries. It is for this reason that when woods are felled, when they are suppressed by tarmac and concrete and asphalt, it is not only unique species and habitats that disappear, but also unique memories, unique forms of thought.”

Robert Macfarlane

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Asphalt Century Concrete Country Disappear Forests Form Habitat Imagination Islands Memories Reason Species Unique Woods World

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“The association of the wild and the wood also run deep in etymology. The two words are thought to have grown out of the root word wald and the old Teutonic word walthus, meaning 'forest.' Walthus entered Old English in its variant forms of 'weald,' 'wald,' and 'wold,' which were used to designate both 'a wild place' and 'a wooded…

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“We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places - but we are far less good at saying what places…

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Anyone who lives in a city will know the feeling of having been there too long. The gorge-vision that the streets imprint on us, the sense of blockage, the longing for surfaces other than glass, brick, concrete and tarmac…I have lived in Cambridge on and off for a decade, and I imagine I will continue to do so for years…

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“I had started climbing trees about three years earlier, or rather, re-started; for I had been at a school that had a wood for its playground. We had climbed and christened the different trees (Scorpio, The Major Oak, Pegagsus), and fought for their control in territorial conflicts with elaborate rules and fealties. My father built my brother and me a…

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“The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against…

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“My grandparents... planted their land up with trees, both those native... and exotics which stood in memory of the countries where they had lived.”

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“Touch is a reciprocal action, a gesture of exchange with the world. To make an impression is also to receive one, and the soles…

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Knowing another is endless,' Shepherd had written; 'The thing to be known grows with the knowing.

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By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage,…

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I remembered what Thoreau had written in his journal about thinking nothing of walking eight miles to greet a tree.

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“...the instinct and the body (the felt smoothness of pebbles, the seen grain of light) must know in ways that the conscious mind cannot.”

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“meaning indifferent to the distinction between things. It is not, on the whole, that natural phenomena and entities themselves are disappearing; rather that there…

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Explore all 60 Robert Macfarlane quotes

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