Some weeks ago I read an excellent article by Alastair Humphreys, entitled A Single Small Map Is Enough For A Lifetime. The core of the article details how much excitement and wonder exists right outside one's own door - the thirst for adventure can be quenched without boarding a CO2 emitting plane to a far off destination.

I have heard the carbon argument against travel before, but it doesn't move me. Global warming and climate change will not be addressed through changes in individual consumer behavior. That said, this disagreement in motivation doesn't detract from my agreement with the subsequent points.

I have moved almost yearly since starting college. I live away from my hometown. I don't feel strongly connected to my locality. After so much movement, I struggle to connect to an area, as I have internalized a semi-nomadic existence. I dream of moving again at the end of my lease, somewhere distant and new.

This paragraph from the article struck me, and motivated this post:

Once I can put a name to something, like a bird or tree, I seem to come across it more often, and I also appreciate it more for knowing the word. As Robert Macfarlane wrote in “Landmarks,” “Language deficit leads to attention deficit. As we further deplete our ability to name, describe and figure particular aspects of our places, our competence for understanding and imagining possible relationships with non-human nature is correspondingly depleted.”

I can share two anecdotes which validated this perspective for me.

I recently bought a snake plant, my first house plant. Suddenly, I see snake plants everywhere, including in places I've walked by dozens of times. It's as if my world has become more real, more alive, inhabited as opposed to desolate - and just from a single houseplant.

Secondly, in reading Richard Francis Burton's Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to el Medinah and Meccah, I took away the incredible breadth of the author's vocabulary. Perhaps not surprising for a master of languages, but it extended beyond casual conversation to poetry to literature to religion to geography and geology - describing each leg of the trip in exquisite detail.

I feel this language deficit deeply. I can see how it limits my perception, and how that limited perception affects my psychology.

I don't believe there's an easy cure. The fast-paced, instant-cure lifestyle led me to this situation, so I don't think it will help me escape. Instead, I want to slow down. Read more slowly, consulting a dictionary for unfamiliar words. Write and reflect more. Engage in conversation with others. Break out of my comfort zone, before it slowly strangles itself in language deficit.