#(note I literally only have geological examples because I distinctly lack awareness in anything else. complicit also)

[thesecondface]

Islands of Abandonment - Cal Flyn

Recently read this book on the near miraculous proliferation of life and biodiversity in post-human landscapes, and what a fantastic book it was. This was very much in the vein of Macfarlane's Underland (both being prone to wax poetic on unconventional landscapes) but more, somehow. I'm not sure I can articulate it well – perhaps it was the choice in the unconventional landscape which predisposes the reader to its inherited stakes, or lack thereof; or perhaps it was the direct, clear cut message this book had, that Underland maybe lacked in – but this felt infinitely more personal. I enjoyed Underland; I enjoyed Macfarlane's writing and his infectious awe with the landscapes around him – I thought he painted a beautiful, unsettling picture of the underworld, but it was his awe at the end of the day and not my own. Flyn, however, tells you exactly what she argues for in her book, and I'll be damned if I wasn't sold right there and then:

The idea that 'knowledge deepens with appreciation' and that aestheticism can be taught is so extremely crucial. You have to fall in love with your environment to understand it. You have to understand it in order to save it (if, indeed, it needs saving of the human kind). And this gold mine of a book takes these forgotten, unpleasant landscapes and makes you love them – practicing precisely what it preaches.

(Perhaps this struck so deeply because I was so sheltered a city kid who then went on to geologise, and went on to find out just how much you can learn from simple observation and the scientific process. How little I knew before, how little I still know – how little everyone else knows, and how difficult a task it is to invoke any response besides the unabiding blankness that is the death-knell to all educators – to apply the term liberally. It's something that I quite desperately want to cultivate, this awareness of the environment around me; I want to train myself to love the things that previously held neither appeal nor interest to me, because not so long ago I was that blank and disconnected. It's why iNaturalist was such a revelation to me. This book was another, I think).