“Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.”
“We all carry trace fossils within us – the marks that the dead and the missed leave behind.”
“By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made.”
“Deep time is kept by rock, ice, stalactites, seabed sediments and the drift of tectonic plates.”
“Mountains rise and fall. We live on a restless Earth.”
“Books , like landscapes, leave their marks in us.”
“We are, as a species, finding it increasingly hard to imagine that we are part of something which is larger than our own capacity.”
“When woods and trees are destroyed – incidentally, deliberately – imagination and memory go with them.”
“A walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.”
“Wild animals, like wild places, are invaluable to us precisely because they are not us.”
“Paths are the habits of a landscape … It’s hard to create a footpath on your own… Paths connect.”
“The deepwood is vanished in these islands … but we are still haunted by the idea of it.”
– Robert Macfarlane, landscape and nature writer
THE autumn programme at the Dorset Museum in Dorchester explores how writers, poets, musicians and filmmakers have been inspired by Thomas Hardy. The talks continue onThursday 13th October withThe Real Woman Behind Tess of the d’Urbervilles, an online event at 7pm. Gill Donell will be joined by panellists Professor Angelique Richardson, Lady Edwina Grosvenor and Dr Rose Wallis to discuss Thomas Hardy’s character of Tess Durbeyfield and the real woman who influenced the famous story.