They survive as convention, tradition, as a sequence of coordinates, as a series of waymarks, as dotted lines on charts, and as stories and songs… What you should first realize, to understand the sea roads, is how close the ocean brings far-apart places… in the pre-modern world, the boat was the fastest means of long-distance travel… The second thing to know about sea roads is that they are not arbitrary.

In Old English the hwael-weg (the whale’s way), the swan-rad (the swan’s way) in Norse the veger in Gaelic rathad mara or astar mara in English the ocean roads, the sea lanes… Sea roads are dissolving paths whose passage leaves no trace beyond a wake, a brief turbulence astern.

Here are some excerpts from a chapter on water from “The Old Ways”, he writes:

Robert Macfarlane is a fellow at Cambridge University in England, frequent essayist and contributor to respected publications, author of several books including “Mountains of the Mind”, “The Wild Places”, “The Old Ways”, and “Landmarks” wherein he mixes keen observation, unusual perspectives, history and literature, and the fascination with the derivations of many words in many languages that reflect the diversity and nuance of how we name natural things. This week we turn to the third in our series of favorite Nature writers and their observations that have shaped the underlying message of World Ocean Radio and the World Ocean Observatory.

WOR 386 The Old Ways – Robert Macfarlane I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.

The old ways macfarlane