Book #8 - Underland by Robert Macfarlane

[Dee]

I found it fascinating the revelation that this generation and the coming generations will possibly be the first to fly in the face of burial tradition. That we can nearly flippantly cast our bodies to the breeze probably denotes a wide variety of changes, among which might involve sheer populous and shrinking land mass, a stepping away from body/soul connection and perhaps even religion itself or belief in any semblance of afterlife. Although I do take tiny umbrage with the concept as American Indians (now Indigenous People) and other early cultures did cremate. I think about those tree seed burials and wonder how you keep a corpse safe in these situations from the ever-expanding idiocy and disrespect we see in all areas. Oh, this book is bringing on the macabre thought or two.

Just for the very reason of avoiding to be excavated, I’d not want to be buried for starters. I’m all for cremation for a hundred reasons. I actually find it much more poignant and beautiful. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists all cremate their dead. Vikings did. It’s based on the firm belief of letting the spirit fly free from the body. The after life being a purely spirit world. The ancient Egyptians burying so much for the afterlife like it was a guaranteed physical resurrection… fascinating.

I’m all for the “from dust to dust”… I find that concept beautiful and comforting. Cremating speeds up the process and cuts out a very lonely, very dark and very disturbing part for me. But I also understand burial and respect it.

A bit of a leap, but something I have always found fascinating in my favourite tv show, The Walking Dead: the group’s code of burning the undead but burying their loved ones. There is a poignant distinction of burying being more respectful, and the physical act of digging a grave and standing around it in a ritual that is part of paying respects and allowing more intimate mourning.

[Dee]

Thanks for setting up the next part with questions, Moonchime, hoping to read on today.

[Moonchime]

It is really exciting that there are three of us swimming in these waters. Lovely to have Lori with us.
I know it isn't the easiest of books but it's certainly food for thought.

I am interested in the expanding recurring prompt, "We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most.” Plus, I look forward to his assertion that this exploration of the “below” yields a feeling of hope and meaning as a species rather than futileness in this ocean of time.

I think it's natural to be tender to the dead as their chapter is closed and so often it is only when we realise that we will never see someone again that we fully grasp what they meant to us. There is something about living every day that creates a different dynamic in our relationships - perhaps because we are so often thinking of the future and how things will affect us. When someone dies we find a new understanding of the impact that person had on our lives and what it will mean to us that we will no longer see them. Before that point it seems impossible that those very close to us will ever leave - death is something we do not want to face unless we are forced to - and sooner or later we are forced to.

Dee wrote

Just for the very reason of avoiding to be excavated, I’d not want to be buried for starters. I’m all for cremation for a hundred reasons. I actually find it much more poignant and beautiful. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists all cremate their dead. Vikings did. It’s based on the firm belief of letting the spirit fly free from the body. The after life being a purely spirit world. The ancient Egyptians burying so much for the afterlife like it was a guaranteed physical resurrection… fascinating.

I’m all for the “from dust to dust”… I find that concept beautiful and comforting. Cremating speeds up the process and cuts out a very lonely, very dark and very disturbing part for me. But I also understand burial and respect it.

A bit of a leap, but something I have always found fascinating in my favourite tv show, The Walking Dead: the group’s code of burning the undead but burying their loved ones. There is a poignant distinction of burying being more respectful, and the physical act of digging a grave and standing around it in a ritual that is part of paying respects and allowing more intimate mourning.

I envy your certainty Dee in knowing that you want to be cremated. I have thought long and hard about both and simply find it very difficult to decide. I like the idea of being green and giving back to the earth in some way - cremation has a big carbon footprint so I'm not sure I want to go that way and yet I don't think I'd like to be buried in some anonymous patch.
I think you are right in saying that burial allows for a more intimate mourning - I love going around cemeteries and would hate to think there might not be any one day. When you read the stones there is a connection with that person across time. On the other hand many of the preparations are not necessary.
My problem with cremation is that, at least in my experience, no-one knows what to do with the ashes - or there's disagreement. They end up being stuck away under someone's bed or in a cupboard until a decision is made. obviously there are exceptions but I suspect it's time for us to think of some greener solutions - much as I quite fancy a viking burial.

[Dee]

I think it’s going to be simply impossible to keep burying people, there is just no room for it. I’m finding it upsetting that in cemeteries now you’re supposed to pay a fee to keep your grave undisturbed. After fees are no longer paid, that space will be reused, and god only knows what they do with the remains of the people who were buried their previously, I suspect they get burnt. Might as well be burnt straight away?

I kind of like the idea of the green organic cemeteries where you get buried in compostable cardboard coffins, and a tree planted above. Giving back, becoming nourishment. But again, there is not enough space on our planet for everyone to be buried this way.

I think if people choose to be cremated - they should really put it in their will what they’d like to be done with their ashes. Ultimately, I think I’m not really bothered. I have one wish, to have Will’s and my ashes to be mixed together. After that, I think I’d be happy for my children to decide on a place, where they would both like to go to sit quietly and think of us when they wanted to. I think it would be lovely to mark the spot with a tree, and perhaps a little seat under. But I’d rather have this spot somewhere chosen by them, than imposing our choice of location. This spot is no longer for us, it’s for them.

If there is a tree planted on the spot, perhaps that offsets the carbon footprint of the cremation?

[Dee]

Dark Matter

Some questions for possible focus on Descending.
Please feel free to comment on the previous parts - these are just for structure but fly free if you want to.

1.What did you find interesting/surprising in the number of underground tunnels and chambers that support the modern world?

I think perhaps the sheer quantity and lengths of these tunnels. How hot it is down there. Miners going down with drink bottles on cool bags with rehydration schedules. How undeterred humans are to retrieve what they find useful from the depths of the ground.

2. In reply to Macfarlane's question (P. 67) "Why are you searching for dark matter?" Christopher answers "to further our knowledge and to give life meaning. If we're not exploring, we're not doing anything. We're just waiting." Do you agree with this view?

I was thinking “waiting for what?” I guess just waiting around to die?
Yes, I agree. Exploring is what makes our lives meaningful. Exploring the world and life in its myriad of forms: our bodies, our abilities, our relationships with other humans, our history, our possible future, our planet, its creatures, our universe, our place in it, art forms, stories, food, music... If we are not exploring - not playing, not thinking, we are scoundrelling our precious lives away. That’s not to say that we still don’t need little pauses in between our endless explorations just to be, like an animal, a cat basking in the sun.

3. In pages 75 - 79 Macfarlane asks the question "Are we being good ancestors?"

What do you think?

I think humans are simultaneously the best and the worst. We are leaving a lot of good things for future generations: medicines, art, comforts, stories… but in a relentless search of making life filled with more and more comfort, we have made irreversible mistakes of polluting and killing the planet and its creatures, which is unforgivable, from the moment humans have become conscious of the impact of their endeavours. Humans might have meant well, trying to better their lives, but in the process they’ve done so much harm. Doing harm unknowingly is one thing. To continue doing it even though we know it’s bad and will harm the generations who come after us… now that makes us undeniably bad ancestors, sadly. That’s what I think anyways.


4. "Sometimes in the darkness you can see more clearly."
Can this be true?

I think it’s absolutely true. Sometimes you need to shut out all the distraction and noise of our world to really concentrate … is why we close our eyes instinctively when we need to focus. In this chapter we find out that certain experiments in search for evidence of dark matter can be only carried out in the perfect darkness of the underground. But I think the statement is true in every sense. And then also comes the enriched experience of light and colour once we’ve temporarily deprived ourselves of it, but that’s another matter.


I found Dark Matter difficult to grasp in parts - especially as my scientific knowledge is not strong but it is worth skim reading at the very least and his actions on the last page of the chapter will be familiar to us all. What will be your lasting impression?

I’ve also found the chapter a difficult read and not grasping a lot of the science but at the same time falling in complete awe of it: the incredible ability of humans for abstract thought to access and further such knowledge, the insatiable thirst to acquire further understanding of our universe and existence.

There are many things that have floored me in this chapter. Such as only five percent of the universe’s mass is made of matter we can see or touch and that from the point of view of dark matter and energy, our world is the ghost world they shift through like we weren’t even there.

The description of the broken lizard-like machinery driven into chambers to be buried in salt will stay with me. As the image of the crazy ride in the salt tunnels.

One paragraph that has made me pause was this:

”Out through the door and into burning white day, blue billowing sky, sun glinting off windscreen and chain-link, tarmac and grass blade, dark matter nowhere and everywhere around me – and surfacing into this blinding light seems like stepping into ignorance.”

This was I sharp contrast to the experience of reemergence from the caves described in Burial. Where it was a revelation of light and colour abs beauty, as in coming back from a near death experience into rejoicing in the exuberance of life. Now we’ve had near the opposite: reemergence in the loud and colourful world that masks or distracts from deeper knowledge of the universe gained in the belly of our planet: something that is far from joyous - but slightly regrettable.

It’s a very interesting thought to me. Whether deeper and more detailed knowledge might lessen our childlike wonder of our world. Like when everything can be broken down to particles and equations and data, would that disperse all magic? Or would that become a higher form of magic, dissecting and understanding magic?

I loved the closing passage of the chapter, Robert driving through the night and arriving home, stroking the face of his sleeping child. Arriving home in so many different ways.

[Dee]

I liked Christopher and his thoughts on religion are something fresh to me I would need to ponder further.

”No divinity in which I would wish to believe would declare itself by means of what we would recognise as evidence. If there is a god, we should not be able to find it. If I detected proof of a deity, I would distrust that deity on the grounds that a god should be smarter than that.”

[Iris]

Woah! Sorry I'm so late to the underground party! What a lot to digest from all your ponderings. I have read the first chapter and am about to embark on the second (following a skim read over the first of which I've now scant memory 2 or 3 weeks later!). I've not much capacity to write just now, but please know that I am appreciating your wonderfully thought-provoking words.

[Moonchime]

So much to think about Mz Dee.

Dark Matter

2. In reply to Macfarlane's question (P. 67) "Why are you searching for dark matter?" Christopher answers "to further our knowledge and to give life meaning. If we're not exploring, we're not doing anything. We're just waiting." Do you agree with this view?

Dee wrote:

I was thinking “waiting for what?” I guess just waiting around to die?
Yes, I agree. Exploring is what makes our lives meaningful. Exploring the world and life in its myriad of forms: our bodies, our abilities, our relationships with other humans, our history, our possible future, our planet, its creatures, our universe, our place in it, art forms, stories, food, music... If we are not exploring - not playing, not thinking, we are scoundrelling our precious lives away. That’s not to say that we still don’t need little pauses in between our endless explorations just to be, like an animal, a cat basking in the sun.

Yes I agree it is important to explore, although as you imply it is important to have a wide definition of the word - reflection is, I think, a very important part of exploration as is trying to express experience through different media. I do agree that we do need pauses - just to be - in fact I think without those pauses we get lost - or maybe in those pauses we are exploring...

3. In pages 75 - 79 Macfarlane asks the question "Are we being good ancestors?"

What do you think?

Dee wrote

I think humans are simultaneously the best and the worst. We are leaving a lot of good things for future generations: medicines, art, comforts, stories… but in a relentless search of making life filled with more and more comfort, we have made irreversible mistakes of polluting and killing the planet and its creatures, which is unforgivable, from the moment humans have become conscious of the impact of their endeavours. Humans might have meant well, trying to better their lives, but in the process they’ve done so much harm. Doing harm unknowingly is one thing. To continue doing it even though we know it’s bad and will harm the generations who come after us… now that makes us undeniably bad ancestors, sadly. That’s what I think anyways.

Yes I do agree with so much of what you say - exactly how much we are to blame is a very difficult question and maybe we are not all equal in the part we play.

I think increased industrialisation has caused us to have a disconnect between nature and ourselves. At one time we would have been much more at one with the rhythm of the earth instead of being distanced by so many of our technological advances.
We are all products of our time and much of what we now need to reverse was embarked upon before we realised the impact it would have.

Of course now we know about global warming and what needs to happen, but behavioural change always lags behind knowledge and things we have come to rely on cannot be changed overnight. Having said that there is a reluctance to embrace changes that make our lives harder or less pleasurable. There was certainly much scepticism over whether global warming was real, even with all the evidence from scientists and some sources that sought to deny it for their own ends, were, I think, culpable.

On the whole I suspect we’re no better or worse than many before us, but live at a critical time in which our actions have more impact than previously.

4. "Sometimes in the darkness you can see more clearly."
Can this be true?

Dee said:

I think it’s absolutely true. Sometimes you need to shut out all the distraction and noise of our world to really concentrate … is why we close our eyes instinctively when we need to focus. In this chapter we find out that certain experiments in search for evidence of dark matter can be only carried out in the perfect darkness of the underground. But I think the statement is true in every sense. And then also comes the enriched experience of light and colour once we’ve temporarily deprived ourselves of it, but that’s another matter

It is so true isn't it? The more we cut out the more we see. I have listened to blind people speak of how much more they are aware of than the sighted person because of their reliance on the other senses and I think that is very understandable. There is something about darkness which heightens every fibre of your being. I also think silence can bring about great sensitivity too and is much under-rated.

Dee said

It’s a very interesting thought to me. Whether deeper and more detailed knowledge might lessen our childlike wonder of our world. Like when everything can be broken down to particles and equations and data, would that disperse all magic? Or would that become a higher form of magic, dissecting and understanding magic?

I loved that thought. I have decided that it would be a higher form of magic - I cannot conceive of a time when discovery will not leave us in awe and wonder; the more I discover the more stunned I am by the planet we inhabit and the universe around us.

[Moonchime]

The Understorey

The video below is a long one but I suggest you just watch it for a minute or two as I feel it imparts a feeling of a forest that is full of magic.



Please feel free to ignore the questions or focus on one or two as the mood takes you.

1. The Wood Wide Web is full of surprises: "you look at the network," says Merlin, " and then it starts to look back at you."
How has the information in this chapter changed the way you view the forest?



2. Language reveals how we view the world. Puhpowee means " the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight," in a native American language - why do you think Western science has no words for so many of nature's wonders?


3. Science is messy according to Merlin who would like to write the "dark twin" of any formal science paper. P. 108
What messy science interested you or made you smile?


4. "The word for for world is forest" do you agree that it is a good match?

[Moonchime]

1. The Wood Wide Web is full of surprises: "you look at the network," says Merlin, " and then it starts to look back at you."

How has the information in this chapter changed the way you view the forest?


It blows my mind to think of the forest as a communicating vibrant network. I guess you often walk-through thinking of the trees and what they’ve seen before; the secrets they keep, but to have proof of how they connect with each other is phenomenal.

Watching a documentary sometime ago on the wood network I was amazed but I’ve always been a bit of tree hugger so when I was told by someone to listen to a Silver Birch in the wind – it became real and tangible.
You need to target a young slim tree (I’m sure it would work with some others but those features just made it easy) and you must rest your head against the trunk and listen.
The tree pulses with life and it sounds as if you can hear its sap flowing – it’s just so striking – realising that the tree is moving and throbbing within is so humbling; it doesn’t matter that you know the theory, it’s the living reality of the sound that stops you in your tracks.



2. Language reveals how we view the world. Puhpowee means " the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight," in a native American language - why do you think Western science has no words for so many of nature's wonders?

As we have made scientific leaps it has sometimes resulted in a devaluing of nature; I think this can only be because we do not live as close to nature as many indigenous peoples and therefore have become unable to see it with the clarity of those who live cheek by jowl with their surroundings.

Language holds so much of the way in which a society views itself and those within it – making it a fascinating subject in which to discover what matters and what things are not considered as important. The things we name take on a value and make it possible for us to talk about them and to signify in our thinking. Hopefully our vocabulary will increase as we re-evaluate our relationship with the wild and, in naming, we will recognise things that have previously gone un-noticed and give them a place at our table.


3. Science is messy according to Merlin who would like to write the "dark twin" of any formal science paper. P. 108
What messy science interested you or made you smile?

I loved the story of the shaved bees – it made my head implode at the very thought of such an intricate and seemingly impossible task. How do you hold a bee while you shave it? What do you shave it with and if you put it to sleep how do you give it the sleeping drug?


4. "The word for for world is forest" do you agree that it is a good match?


It certainly seems to be a good match as the definition for world is “the earth with all its countries and peoples” and every kind of behaviour and activity that we see outside of the forest is in and beneath the trees. Fungus and plants communicate and support each other as well as fight for themselves (although there wasn’t so much discussion of the latter); life, death and adaptation to change are constant – so I wonder – what is the difference between them and us?

Fungus are incredible and so mysterious; they have the power to kill us and nourish us and create their own, as yet, little understood worlds – it is no wonder they have always been associated with magic appearing from nowhere and forming strange circles or creating the biggest living mass on earth!!

[Dee]

1. The Wood Wide Web is full of surprises: "you look at the network," says Merlin, " and then it starts to look back at you."

How has the information in this chapter changed the way you view the forest?


It blows my mind to think of the forest as a communicating vibrant network. I guess you often walk-through thinking of the trees and what they’ve seen before; the secrets they keep, but to have proof of how they connect with each other is phenomenal.

Watching a documentary sometime ago on the wood network I was amazed but I’ve always been a bit of tree hugger so when I was told by someone to listen to a Silver Birch in the wind – it became real and tangible.
You need to target a young slim tree (I’m sure it would work with some others but those features just made it easy) and you must rest your head against the trunk and listen.
The tree pulses with life and it sounds as if you can hear its sap flowing – it’s just so striking – realising that the tree is moving and throbbing within is so humbling; it doesn’t matter that you know the theory, it’s the living reality of the sound that stops you in your tracks.


First of all, thank you for setting up this next chapter with topics to ponder. I loved this chapter so much.

I have not come across the idea of the wood wide web before, so I was too totally astonished to learn about the complexity of network beneath our feet in a forest.

In our topic thread here in the forum dedicated to trees, we have previously wondered at the crown shyness phenomena and listening to signs of life inside a silver birch. Since then I routinely try to listen in, whenever I get the chance. It’s such a beautiful thing to experience.

Reading the chapter has filled with more awe I can process, I’m totally overwhelmed by the complexity and beauty of our natural world.

I loved the description of Robert and Merle becoming one with the forest during their day and night together.

Reading the chapter makes me want to spend more time in the forest. Next weekend…


2. Language reveals how we view the world. Puhpowee means " the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight," in a native American language - why do you think Western science has no words for so many of nature's wonders?

As we have made scientific leaps it has sometimes resulted in a devaluing of nature; I think this can only be because we do not live as close to nature as many indigenous peoples and therefore have become unable to see it with the clarity of those who live cheek by jowl with their surroundings.

Language holds so much of the way in which a society views itself and those within it – making it a fascinating subject in which to discover what matters and what things are not considered as important. The things we name take on a value and make it possible for us to talk about them and to signify in our thinking. Hopefully our vocabulary will increase as we re-evaluate our relationship with the wild and, in naming, we will recognise things that have previously gone un-noticed and give them a place at our table.

Here, here. I very much hope so. It’s funny, how we always need new words. Made me think of our little festival in the summer when we were in search of a word that meant happiness and contentment without idleness and settling, and we came up with zelikokowa.

I think another problem is that Western science takes itself so seriously and its language is so dry and technical, deliberately separating itself from everyday or poetic language with a haughty snobbism, that it literally needs translation by popular writers for us to understand. Thank heavens for people like David Attenborough, Brian Cox and Robert Macfarlane. I also love Merlin’s attitude to science and language and how he’s planning on writing partner books to his scientific work that would give him more freedom to describe what he really wants to share with the world about his discoveries.


3. Science is messy according to Merlin who would like to write the "dark twin" of any formal science paper. P. 108
What messy science interested you or made you smile?

It’s hard to choose between the drunk pissing monkeys and the bees with the shaven bellies!

I loved the story of the shaved bees – it made my head implode at the very thought of such an intricate and seemingly impossible task. How do you hold a bee while you shave it? What do you shave it with and if you put it to sleep how do you give it the sleeping drug?


Something to research?

4. "The word for for world is forest" do you agree that it is a good match?


It certainly seems to be a good match as the definition for world is “the earth with all its countries and peoples” and every kind of behaviour and activity that we see outside of the forest is in and beneath the trees. Fungus and plants communicate and support each other as well as fight for themselves (although there wasn’t so much discussion of the latter); life, death and adaptation to change are constant – so I wonder – what is the difference between them and us?

Fungus are incredible and so mysterious; they have the power to kill us and nourish us and create their own, as yet, little understood worlds – it is no wonder they have always been associated with magic appearing from nowhere and forming strange circles or creating the biggest living mass on earth!!

This mushroom is breathtaking! And you’re right, all we have learnt about the forest in this chapter is pretty mind blowing.

I’m pondering, like Robert, how we are trying to explain everything in our world by projecting our human characteristics, functions and politics onto everything around us. And I love the opposite, and declaring the world is the forest. Not a human centric way of looking at the world around us, but us humans being very much a part of the texture of the natural world. Forget countries and all the material stuff we humans have created.

I also loved the way to see our own bodies as a complex web of microorganisms - I love all things that make us humans take a much humbler attitude to our existence, and not consider ourselves so damn superior. I feel very torn already about our footprints on this planet, as we have discussed earlier.

[Dee]

I was reading the chapter to the soundtrack of the YouTube clip you’ve posted above, MC. And let it run as we were going about our day in the house. When it finished, YT moved onto playing another forest soundtrack, this time without human music. It’s pure forest sounds. I’m listening to this now as I write.



Very relaxing. We are having rain right now, here in my lounge.

Some more random thoughts on the chapter:
I enjoyed the thoughts on free-market versus socialist community interpretations of the wood wide web, and how in reality we probably have a bit of both going on, and how extraordinary that is.

Loved the quote:

“Maybe, then, what we need to understand the forest’s underland is a new language altogether - one that doesn’t automatically convert it to our own use values. […] Perhaps we need an entirely new language system to talk about fungi… We need to speak in spores.“

Also found it fascinating that in the Potawatomi language 70% of the words are verbs, compared to 30% in English. I love that this means the people who speak this language are more interested in describing things that happen than labelling things. And how they consider mountains, fire, stories, music, rhythms as animate. It’s so much more soulful looking at the world like this (as a forest) not as a museum.