A decade ago Robert Macfarlane published a wonderful book called Landmarks — I reviewed it here — which argues for the preservation and extension of the accurate description of our natural environments. The book collects, from a range of British places, local words for local things, and Macfarlane calls that collection his Counter-Desecration Phrasebook. It occurs to me that we need many Counter-Desecration Phrasebooks to help us protect and preserve what Gandalf calls “all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands.”
