NPR

'Underland' Connects Us To Dazzling Worlds Beneath Our Feet

The beauty of Robert Macfarlane's writing, and of the natural world it describes, is immense. His words also act as a warning, ensuring a recognition of human harms to the environment.

Off the western coast of Norway are sea caves graced by stick figures painted more than 2,000 years ago. Colored red from the iron-oxide pigment used by Bronze Age artists, the figures appear to be in motion, with arms and legs splayed.

Among his travels in , British nature writer Robert Macfarlane journeys to the remote cave called Kollhellaren on the tip of the island Moskenes to see its dancing figures. To arrive there, Macfarlane crosses a ridge of peaks called the Lofoten Wall, pulls himself out of a snow crevasse into which he had

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