Can language be a tool to better understand a natural environment, and does the act of looking for, recording, and illustrating these lost words reconnect you with the landscape?

Language is an intangible and important tie to natural landscapes. Without knowing the word to describe something, its existence becomes harder to notice.

As we lose the vocabulary which connects us to our natural surroundings, we lose a level of care and concern for those habitats, species, and spaces. As words, phrases and placenames fade from common language and use so do those which they describe.

In 2009 the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed a series of ‘wild words’ such as blackberry, dandelion, acorn, heron, otter, magpie, sycamore, willow. These were replaced with terms such as blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste. Distribution of local, natural, native language is in decline.

Through the act of walking and recording, I aim to understand the moor in a deeper and more nuanced way, through discovering lost phenomena through the actions of naming and looking for. In historical context, the finding and naming of species is often accompanied by illustrations. I hope to illustrate my findings, with the use of pencil and drawing to denote soft or subtle features of landscape that may be less tangible.