A sense of place

 Robert Macfarlane tells the story of Richard Cox, an English linguist who went to Carloway on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides and taught himself Gaelic.

Carloway is a district of about 60 square miles. It had 13 townships and perhaps 500 people when Cox arrived in the 1990s. In that small place, Cox recorded more than 3,000 place names.

I like places like that: places where everything has been named, often more than once.

I grew up in such a place. On my grandparents’ farm there were many precise places. The Bottom was a place, and within The Bottom were many places that could become soft and treacherous when the creek flooded. But there was only one Place Where Grandfather (Always) Gets the Tractor Stuck. There were many pecan trees, but only one Pecan Where Joe Killed the Rattlesnake. (Joe was a birddog, famous in the 1950s.)

If my grandfather told me to cut nettles in a place, I knew where to go. We organized our minds that way.

I’ve discovered that’s one of the features of my mind that won’t change. I’m new to Georgia, but I’m acquiring a sense of place.

• Source: Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks; London: Penguin Books, 2016.