Summary of Robert Macfarlane's Underland

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The riven trunk of an old ash tree marks the entrance to the underland. The underland is a labyrinth that deepens steeply into the earth. It is a cold, dark space full of sound and scenes that move slowly.

#2 The Minotaur is a figure on a coin designed by a metalworker on an island in the Mediterranean 300 years before the founding of the Roman Empire. The coin’s face shows a square labyrinth with a single entrance on its upper edge and a complex path to its centre.

#3 The same three tasks - to shelter what is precious, to yield what is valuable, and to dispose of what is harmful - recur across cultures and epochs.

#4 The underland is full of dirt, mortality, and brutal labor. It is a symbol of what cannot be said or seen: loss, grief, and the mind’s obscured depths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822530416

IRB Media

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Insights on Robert Macfarlane's Underland

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The riven trunk of an old ash tree marks the entrance to the underland. The underland is a labyrinth that deepens steeply into the earth. It is a cold, dark space full of sound and scenes that move slowly.

#2

The Minotaur is a figure on a coin designed by a metalworker on an island in the Mediterranean 300 years before the founding of the Roman Empire. The coin’s face shows a square labyrinth with a single entrance on its upper edge and a complex path to its centre.

#3

The same three tasks - to shelter what is precious, to yield what is valuable, and to dispose of what is harmful - recur across cultures and epochs.

#4

The underland is full of dirt, mortality, and brutal labor. It is a symbol of what cannot be said or seen: loss, grief, and the mind’s obscured depths.

#5

We have become accustomed to a flat perspective, which makes it difficult for us to understand the depths of the underland. The underland is vital to the material structures of contemporary existence, as well as to our memories, myths, and metaphors.

#6

Deep time is the chronology of the underland. It is the dizzying expanses of Earth history that stretch away from the present moment. It is measured in units that humble the human instant: epochs and aeons, instead of minutes and years.

#7

The Epic of Gilgamesh, written around 2100 BC in Sumeria, tells of a hazardous descent into darkness to reach someone or something consigned to the realm of the dead. The story suggests that darkness may be a medium of vision, and that descent may be a movement toward revelation rather than deprivation.

#8

I have been writing about the relationships between landscape and the human heart for more than fifteen years. What began as a personal quest to understand why I was so drawn to mountains as a young man has evolved into a project of deep-mapping carried out over five books and around 2,000 pages.

#9

I was given two objects. The first was a kist, which was a double-cast bronze casket the size of a swan’s egg. It was a kist and what it contained was toxic. Its maker had written his demons down on a sheet of paper and then burned the paper. Then he double-cast the casket.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The bones of a child lie in darkness on a ledge of limestone. Sunlight has not seen this child for over 10,000 years. In that time, calcite has flowed like silver varnish from the rock around, chrysalizing the body.

#2

The Mendips are a limestone range that stretches almost thirty miles west to east across the Bristol Channel. Their geology is complex, but they are mostly a limestone range.

#3

The first fact of limestone is its solubility in water. It is easily eroded by water, and can be found in limestone landscapes that are rich with burial sites and caving areas.

#4

We