"We lack - we need - a term for those
places where one
experiences a ‘transition’ from a known
landscape onto John’s ‘far side of the
moon’, into Hudson’s ‘new
country’, into Berry’s ‘another
world’: somewhere we
feel and
think significantly
differently. I have for some time been
imagining such transitions as ‘border crossings’. These borders do not correspond to
national boundaries, and
papers and documents are unrequired at them. Their traverse is generally unbiddable, and no reliable
map exists of their
routes and
outlines. They exist even in familiar landscapes: there when you cross a certain watershed, treeline or snowline, or enter
rain, storm or
mist, or pass from
boulder clay onto
sand, or chalk onto greenstone. Such
moments are rites of
passage that reconfigure
local geographies, leaving known
places outlandish or quickened,
revealing continents within counties."
Robert Macfarlane,
The Old Ways, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012, 78.
