Once Upon A Wild(Ness)

What would it be like if land came to life? If it murmured muddy syllables and moved in moss and tidal swells? Ness by Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood is a book where land moves, speaks, and breathes new life into our world. With mystifying lyricism and illustrations, these collaborators conjure a realm of ruin and rewilding — a realm in which the land reclaims its own sacred magic. 

On a mysterious salt-and-shingle island stands a decaying concrete structure known as The Green Chapel. Inside the structure, a nuclear ritual is underway, led by an ominous figure known as The Armourer. However, crossing land, sea, and time, five non-human forces converge to stop this ritual from being completed. These five totemic forces are she, he, it, they and as, and together, they become Ness. 

This island Ness seeks to reclaim was inspired by the Orford Ness National Nature Reserve on the Suffolk coast of England. During the Cold War, Orford Ness was used as a testing site for the atomic bomb by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Continuing through the 1960s, half-buried concrete structures were built to contain these lethal weapons. Now, Orford Ness is a sanctuary for wildlife. 

Chinese water deer and the elusive hare roam the landscape, and barn owls and marsh harriers mottle the skies. From its brackish lagoons and reed marshes to its mud flats and vegetated shingle, Orford Ness offers a sliver of wildness to surrounding plant and animal life. The former Bomb Ballistics Building and other military structures on the island have been converted into nature viewing spots for visitors.  

Similarly, the landscape in Macfarlane and Donwood’s Ness is a place of contrasts. The island in Ness is a site of potential hostility and danger because of The Armourer’s nuclear ritual, yet the landscape aches for freedom from human violence and domination. This island has a protector: Ness. Willow-boned, Ness moves by hyphae and sings in birds. Ness speaks in swifts and has skin of lichen and moss. Ness breathes in rain and exhales rust. Ness has hag stones for eyes. Ness sends “flints through time to foretell their seeings.” Ness is here. Ness is now. Ness begs to be heard: “Listen. Listen now. Listen to Ness.” Ness is multiple; it is being, place, and time, and it has come to reclaim the land. 

The image at the core of Ness is the hag stone, as it’s known in Great Britain. Found in dry riverbeds and along the seashore, hag stones are stones with naturally occurring holes in them created by water erosion. According to folklore across Europe, hag stones are believed to possess a variety of magical properties and offer protection for those who find and carry the stones. It’s said that to look through such a stone is to see into the future or the past—to open a portal between realms. Ness acts as a hag stone itself, giving us a glimpse of the deep time that enfolds us, and as we peer through it, we can see the past and the future we face. 

Ness is a feral and startling incantation that pushes against the extinction of wildness. Weaving threads of ancient myth and Middle English storytelling, Macfarlane and Donwood create an illustrated poem-prose-play that brings to life the fundamental crisis of the Anthropocene: climate change and rapid globalization. As a response to the incipient threat of climate change, this modern mythical tale ruminates on the relationship between humanity and Nature.

At its core, Ness asks us how we defend ourselves from the dangers we inflict upon Nature, and consequently, ourselves — the dangers mankind creates as a result of our own hubris, ignorance, and taste for dominance. These dangers are visually realized by artist Stanley Donwood. Donwood’s shadowy illustrations capture a rooted sense of place that sprawls and anchors Macfarlane’s lilting words. Through this illustrated poem-novella-fable, Macfarlane and Donwood remind us that Nature is the force that tethers the past and future to the land and that humanity and Nature are bound to one another. 

Ness is a timely book that speaks to the power of Nature and its indomitability—it reminds us of a world beyond human. Macfarlane writes with the vision of Nature reasserting itself and reclaiming its power to flourish and provide life. Though humans are now considered to be the dominant species, our legacy will pass, and everything will once again return to the land, the wildness.