Landmarks (8 page)
Authors: Robert Macfarlane
One hears it without listening as one breathes without thinking. But to a listening ear the sound disintegrates into many different notes – the slow slap of a loch, the high clear trill of a rivulet, the roar of spate. On one short stretch of burn the ear may distinguish a dozen different notes at once.
That morning we searched in the mist for the Wells of Dee, the springs that mark the river’s true birthplace. We began at the plateau rim, and from there we followed it back uphill, always taking the larger branch where the stream forked. At last we reached a point where the water rose from within the rock itself. Shepherd had also made this
‘journey to the source
’, and confronted matter in its purest form:
Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away.
This proof of the mountain’s mindlessness was to Shepherd both thrilling and terrifying. The Cairngorms exceeded human comprehension: what she called the
‘total mountain
’ could never totally be known. Yet if approached without expectation, the massif offered remarkable glimpses into its ‘being’.
Walking under Shepherd’s influence, led by her language, I had enjoyed an astonishing time of gifts. The eagle, the geese, the blue-gold loch, the parhelion, the mists, the springs, those few days
in the hills had compressed into them a year’s worth of marvels – and each had its precedent in
The Living Mountain
. The fortuity of it all was acute, approaching the eerie. It was as if we had walked
into
the pages of Nan’s book, though of course her book had emerged out of the Cairngorms themselves, so we were merely completing that circuit of word and world.
| abri | shelter used by mountaineers, typically an overhanging rock mountaineering |
| alpenglow | light of the setting or rising sun seen illuminating high mountains or the underside of clouds mountaineering |
| amar | hill with precipices Gaelic |
| arête | sharp ascending ridge of a mountain mountaineering |
| banc | hill; bank or breast of a hill Welsh |
| bans, vans | high place Cornish |
| barr | summit Irish |
| batch | hillock West Country |
| beacon | conspicuous hill with long sightlines from its summit (suitable for a beacon-fire) southern England, Wales |
| beinn | usually the highest peak in an area; visually dominant summit Gaelic |
| biod | pinnacle; pointed knoll Gaelic |
| bioran | peak of medium height, usually sharp and rugged Gaelic |
| bothy | hut or shelter maintained in remote country Scots |
| brent | brow of a hill Northamptonshire |
| bron | hillside, slope Welsh |
| byurg | rocky hill Shetland |
| cadair | mound or hill shaped like a seat (as place-name element); fort, defensive settlement Welsh |
| caisteal | peak of medium height, usually without corries (literally ‘castle’, ‘fort’) Gaelic |
| càirn , càrn | substantial, complex peak, with corries, shoulders and ridges Gaelic |
| chockstone | stone wedged in a vertical cleft or chimney of rock, impeding progress mountaineering |
| choss | rock that is unsuitable for climbing due to its instability or friability mountaineering |
| cleit | peak usually with a rounded base and a craggy summit Gaelic |
| cnap | small but very rugged peak, often an outlying summit of a beinn or càirn Gaelic |
| cnoc | hill, usually though not always smaller than a sliabh Irish |
| cnwc | hillock, knoll Welsh |
| coire | high, hanging, glacier-scooped hollow on a mountainside, often cliff-girt (anglicized to corrie ) Gaelic |
| cragfast | unable to advance or retreat on a steep climb; stuck, usually requiring rescue mountaineering |
| creachann | grassless, stony hilltop Gaelic |
| creagan | knoll Gaelic |
| croit | humpbacked hill or group of hills Gaelic |
| cruach | rugged peak with pinnacled tops, sometimes resembling a rick or stack (‘ cruach ’) in outline Irish |
| dod , dodd | rounded summit, either a separate hill, or more frequently a lower summit or distinct shoulder of a higher hill northern England, southern Scotland |
| droim | ridge or ‘back’ of hills Irish |
| drum | small, rectangular hillock; a field sloping on all sides Galloway |
| dūn | low hill with a fairly level and extensive summit, providing a good settlement site in open country Old English |
| gala, olva | lookout point Cornish |
| gob | beak or projecting point of mountain Gaelic |
| grianan | knoll or hillock that is often sunny Gaelic |
| gualainn | shoulder of a hill Gaelic |
| hōh | projecting or heel-like ridge Old English |
| hope | hill Cotswolds |
| kame | comb or ridge of hills Shetland |
| knob | round-topped hill Kent |
| landraising | waste disposal site which is above the height of the surrounding land official |
| maol | bare and rugged peak, usually of middling height Gaelic |
| meall | high and rounded summit, often heathery Gaelic |
| mena | hill, high point Cornish |
| moel | of a hilltop or mountain summit: treeless, rounded (literally ‘bald’) Welsh |
| mynydd | mountain, hill Welsh |
| nab | summit of a hill Sussex |
| pap | mountain or hill whose shape is thought to resemble that of a woman’s breast Irish English, Scots |
| pinch | short, steep hill Kent |
| rajel | scree Cornish |
| rake | steep path or track up a fell- or crag-side, often leading to the summit Cumbria |
| ruighe | grassy place on a hillside Gaelic |
| saidse | sound of a falling body Gaelic |
| sgòr , sgùrr | sharp and steep-sloped summit, often rising to a craggy top Gaelic |
| skord | deep indentation in the top of a hill at right angles to its ridge Shetland |
| slaag | low part of the skyline of a hill Shetland |
| sliabh | single mountain; range of mountains Irish |
| soo’s back | sharp long ridge (literally ‘sow’s back’) Scots |
| spidean | sharp summit or top, often rising above a corrie Gaelic |
| sròn | shoulder of land rising from a valley towards the higher reaches of a peak Gaelic |
| stob | high, rugged peak, often with numerous corries Gaelic |
| strone | hill that terminates a range; the end of a ridge Scots |
| stùc | sharp subsidiary peak, often conical in form Gaelic |
| tap , top | summit Scots, especially Aberdeenshire |
| tom | hill or hillock, normally free of rocks and of relatively gentle elevation Gaelic |
| toot | isolated hill suitable for observation, lookout hill western England |
| tòrr | craggy-topped hillock Gaelic |
| tulach | green place on a hillside Gaelic |
| aquabob | icicle Kent |
| billow | snowdrift East Anglia |
| bleb | bubble of air in ice north-east Ireland, northern England |
| blee | high, exposed Northamptonshire |
| blenk | light snow, resembling the ‘blinks’ or ashes that fly out of a chimney Exmoor |
| blin’ drift | drifting snow Scots |
| blunt | heavy fall of snow East Anglia |
| clinkerbell, cockerbell, conkerbell , | icicle Dorset |
| clock-ice | ice cracked and crazed by fissures, usually brought about by the pressure of walkers or skaters Northamptonshire |
| dagger, dagglet , daggler , | icicle Hampshire |
| feetings | footprints of creatures as they appear in the snow Suffolk |
| feevl | snow falling in large flakes Shetland |
| fievel | thin layer of snow Shetland |
| firn | old, consolidated snow, often left over from the previous season mountaineering |
| flaucht | snowflake Scots |
| fleeches | large snowflakes Exmoor |
| flukra | snow falling in large, scale-like flakes Shetland |
| frazil | loose, needle-like ice crystals that form into a churning slush in turbulent super-cooled water, for example in a river on a very cold night hydrological |
| glocken | to start to thaw (compare the Icelandic glöggur , ‘to make or become clear’) Yorkshire |
| graupel | hail meteorological |
| hailropes | hail falling so thickly it appears to come in cords or lines (Gerard Manley Hopkins) poetic |
| heavengravel | hailstones (Gerard Manley Hopkins) poetic |
| ickle | icicle Yorkshire |
| iset | colour of ice: isetgrey , isetblue Shetland |
| moorie caavie | blinding snowstorm Shetland |
| névé | consolidated granular snow formed by repeated freeze-and-thaw cycles, hard and skittery underfoot mountaineering |
| penitent | spike or pinnacle of compact snow or ice left standing after differential melting of a snowfield geographical |
| pipkrakes | needle-like crystals of ice geographical |
| rone | patch or strip of ice north-east Scotland |
| sheebone | snowdrift, heavy fall of snow Northern Ireland |
| shockle | lump of ice; icicle northern England, Scotland |
| shuckle | icicle Cumbria |
| skalva | clinging snow falling in large damp flakes Shetlands |
| skith | thin layer of snow Herefordshire |
| smored | smothered in snow Scots |
| snaw grimet | colour of the ground when lying snow is partly melted Shetland |
| snipe | hanging icicle (so named for its resemblance to the bill of a snipe) Northamptonshire |
| snitter | to snow Sheffield |
| snow-bones | patches of snow seen stretching along ridges, in ruts or in furrows after a partial thaw Yorkshire |
| snow-devil , | mini-cyclone or whirling dervish made of |
| snow-djinn | spindrift (loose particles of snow) wind-whipped into a vortex, which roams the slopes of winter hills mountaineering |
| snyauvie | snowy Scots |
| stivven | become filled with blown or drifted snow East Anglia |
| tankle | icicle Durham |
| ungive | to thaw Northamptonshire |
| unheeve | to thaw or to show condensation Exmoor |
| up’lowsen , up’slaag | to thaw Shetland |
| verglas | thin blue water-ice that forms on rock mountaineering |
| windle | snowdrift Fenland |
| wolfsnow | dangerously heavy and wind-driven snow; a sea blizzard (Gerard Manley Hopkins) poetic |
