Saving 'The Lost Words' of Nature: why this Crowdfunder campaign by @BigGreenBooks matters

A few years ago, author Robert Mcfarlane was alerted by an eagle-eyed reader to the fact that the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary had dropped a number of words relating to nature to replace them with words related to the virtual and technological world instead.

Words that included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heron, ivy, kingfisher, newt, otter and willow, were culled to make way for blog, attachment, celebrity, broadband, chatroom, voice-mail.

The reasoning of the dictionary compilers, which reflected a certain realism it has to be said, was that modern children don't live in semi-rural environments so much and that their lived experience was one that was more indoor and virtual. They were not so aware of the changing of the seasons or the names of natural things. 

McFarlane found this acceptance of the loss of a basic literacy of the landscape alarming. As he puts it in his book, Landmarks,

"...what is lost along with this literacy is something precious: a kind of word magic, the power that certain terms possess to enchant our relations with nature and place" 

To which I would add, if a child cannot name something in the world around them nor understand their importance in the greater scheme of things, how will they learn to care for them or about them if they start to disappear?

While it may be true that children increasingly spend more of  their lives indoors and are growing up in urbanised areas, it is still the case that any number of the things listed above (save perhaps the adder and the otter) can easily be seen in the many green and blue spaces of Haringey and its environs which include the wetlands of Woodberry Down and Walthamstow. Indeed, many of those things can be seen in Harringay itself at Railway Fields, Finsbury Park or strolling by the New River.

Having spent last Spring and Summer delivering nature education to Primary children at Railway Fields, I witnessed first hand the connections with nature the children made as we explored and named the small creatures and plant life of the reserve.

Returning to Mcfarlane, his response to the decline of landscape literacy was to partner with the brilliant artist Jackie Morris to produce a book called The Lost Words, which is both a celebration of nature words and the creatures they invoke, and a stand against the calm acceptance of a childhood spent indoors.

So, when Big Green Books announced a Crowdfunder to put a copy of this beautiful book into every Primary in Haringey, I pledged the cost of one book without hesitation. Pretty soon, others did the same until in *three* days the original target was met.

But this book is important and so Big Green Books would like people to help them double the amount raised so that 70 more schools in North London will benefit. 

If you feel you could contribute a tenner, a fiver even, or can spare a bit more, the page to join the revolution is here 

Please spread the word too.

John Berger, the great art critic and writer who was born in Stoke Newington, once wrote of naming:

"The satisfaction of identifying a live bird as it flies over, or disappears into a hedgerow is a strange one, isn't it? It involves a weird, momentary intimacy, as if at that moment of recognition one addresses the bird - despite the din and confusions of countless other events-one addresses it by its very own particular nickname. Wagtail! Wagtail!"

Who hasn't experienced that moment? Who wouldn't want it for our children?

The Lost Words in Every Haringey Primary Crowdfunder Page

Hazel catkins in Railway Fields 16th Jan 2018